HAMLET’S INSTRUCTION TO THE PLAYERS
Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you,—trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spake my lines. Nor do not saw the air too much with your hand, thus, but use all gently; for in the very torrent, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of your passion, you must acquire and beget a temperance, that may give it smoothness. Oh! it offends me to the soul to hear a robustious periwig-pated fellow tear a passion to tatters,—to very rags,—to split the ears of the groundlings; who, for the most part, are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb show and noise. I would have such a fellow whipped for o’erdoing Termagant; it out-herods Herod. Pray you avoid it.
—Shakespeare.
CHAPTER XIII
ORATORIC READING AND THE ART OF PUBLIC SPEECH
Upon this important subject of public speaking, and the interpretation of the addresses made by others, great men have thus expressed themselves: Dr. Charles W. Eliot, formerly President of Harvard University, says: “Have we not all seen, in recent years, that leading men of business have a great need of a highly trained power of clear and convincing expression? Business men seem to me to need, in speech and writing, all the Roman terseness and the French clearness. That one attainment is sufficient reward for the whole long course of twelve years spent in liberal study.” Abraham Lincoln likewise said: “Extemporaneous speaking should be practiced and cultivated. It is the lawyer’s avenue to the public. However able and faithful he may be in other respects, people are slow to bring him business if he can not make a speech.”
Every thinker knows what a vital part eloquence plays in national as well as individual welfare. If at first thought effective speaking seems a simple thing and a superficial part of education, on mature thought and consideration it will be found to be one of the most complex, vital and difficult problems that education has to meet. And yet, notwithstanding this complexity of the problem, the teacher is cheered by the delightful assurance of giving the student a consciousness of his latent talents and the ability to reveal and make use of them for the proper influencing of his fellow men.
There is a belief fairly commonly held that only a limited few need study the art of public speaking. Never was there a greater error or a more fatal mistake—especially in a republic like ours, where every man should be vitally interested in public affairs. No single citizen can afford not to be able to stand before his fellows and clearly, pleasingly and convincingly present his ideas upon any subject of local, state, or national importance. It is no more an ornamental accomplishment than is grammar, penmanship or simple arithmetic. It should be as universal as “the three r’s.” The hints and selections that follow are carefully chosen to incite every good citizen to the acquirement of this useful and practical aid for his own benefit as well as that of his fellows. All the lessons and analyses that have gone before in these pages will materially aid in the elucidation of these brief lessons.
The basis for development in Effective Speaking rests upon one’s bodily, emotional and mental agencies of expression, and a knowledge of their respective importance and efficient use. That which counts most for development is conscientious practice; without which, progress is impossible.
There are three definite means of communicating thought and feeling to others: (a) Pantomime: face, hands, body; (b) Vocal: tone sound; (c) Verbal: words, which are conventional symbols manifesting mental and emotional states.
The problem, then, is to obtain a harmonious coördination of these three languages. In other words, the content of the word when spoken should be reflected in the tone and in the body. Thus speech becomes effective merely because it receives its just and fair consideration.
With this general understanding let us take up and master the successive steps which ultimately lead to a realization of the desired end.
The first important essential of effective speaking is the Spirit of Directness. By this is meant natural, unaffected speech. Nothing can be more important than that the person speaking use in public address the ordinary elements of Conversation.
Hence, the first step is practice in natural speaking. Commit to memory Hamlet’s Instructions to the Players given on a preceding page. Do this not line by line, but the entire selection as a whole. First: Read it through silently three times to familiarize yourself with the subject-matter. Second: Read it aloud at least five times. Third: Speak it conversationally at least five times from memory. In this practice always be intensely conscious that you are addressing an individual and not an audience.
Now take any of the prose or poetic selections from the earlier pages of this book, memorize them, after studying them as the instructions require, and speak them directly and naturally, in the ordinary conversational style.
Sufficient practice in this is the necessary preparation for the next step, viz., the acquiring of a natural elevated conversational style, which is merely another name for the higher type of public speaking.
Commit all, or a part, of the following selections, keeping in mind that in speaking them you are addressing a group of people.
THE GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
By Abraham Lincoln
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave their last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that the Union shall, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
By this time you should have mastered Ordinary Conversational Style; Elevated Conversational Style; and Abandon and Flexibility of Speech. The next consideration is the importance of Clearness. Clearness in speech means making prominent central words and subordinating unimportant words, or phrases. In other words, the logical sequence of thought must be clearly shown. This is brought about by a variety of inflections, changes of pitch, pause, etc. Clearness in speech is dependent upon clearness of Thinking.
It is important now to give full consideration to the subject of Emphasis. There are more ways than one of emphasizing your thought. The most common way is by merely increasing the stress of voice upon a word. This, however, is the most undignified form of emphasis. It is common to ranters and “soap-box” orators and is one mark of an undisciplined and uncultured man. Remember that loudness is a purely physical element, and does not manifest thought. Such emphasis is an appeal to the brute instinct, and is only expressive of the lower emotions. But Inflection, Changes of Pitch, Pause, Movement and Tone-Color—as have been fully explained in preceding pages—all appeal to the exalted nature of man.
In proportion to the nobleness of an emotion or thought, we find a tendency to accentuate these above-named elements. Such methods of emphasis are appropriate to the most disciplined and cultured man. More than that, they are the surest evidence of a great personality.
Commit, then make clear to the hearer, the vital thought in the following:
He have arbitrary power! My lords, the East India Company have not arbitrary power to give him; the King has no arbitrary power to give him; your Lordships have not; nor the Commons; nor the whole legislature. We have no arbitrary power to give, because arbitrary power is a thing which neither any man can hold nor any man can give. No man can lawfully govern himself according to his own will, much less can one person be governed by the will of another. We are all born in subjection, all born equally, high and low, governors and governed, in subjection to one great, immutable, preëxistent law, prior to all our devices, and prior to all our contrivances, paramount to all our ideas and all our sensations, antecedent to our very existence, by which we are knit and connected in the eternal frame of the universe, out of which we cannot stir.
Extract from President Wilson’s Inaugural Address:
We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be, in the spirit of those who question their own wisdom and seek counsel and knowledge, not shallow self-satisfaction or the excitement of excursions whither they cannot tell. Justice, and only justice, shall always be our motto.
And yet it will be no cool process of mere science. The nation has been deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of government too often debauched and made an instrument of evil.
The feelings with which we face this new age of right and opportunity sweep across our heartstrings like some air out of God’s own presence, where justice and mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are one.
We know our task to be no mere task of politics, but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we be able to understand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men’s hearts wait upon us; men’s lives hang in the balance; men’s hopes call upon us to say what we will do.
Who shall live up to the great trust? Who dares fail to try?
I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side.
God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!
SELECTIONS FOR PART FOUR
To gain control over public speech, to learn to express himself well on his feet, the speaker must both be constantly watchful over his every-day conversation and exercise himself much in writing. Only so can he make his tongue obey his will.-Genung.
If then the power of speech is a gift as great as any that can be named,—if the origin of language is by many philosophers even considered to be nothing short of divine,—if by means of words the secrets of the heart are brought to light, pain of soul is relieved, hidden grief is carried off, sympathy conveyed, counsel imparted, experience recorded, and wisdom perpetuated,—if by great authors the many are drawn up into unity, national character is fixed, a people speaks, the past and the future, the East and the West are brought into communication with each other,—if such men are, in a word, the spokesmen and prophets of the human family,—it will not answer to make light of Literature or to neglect its study; rather we may be sure that, in proportion as we master it in whatever language, and imbibe its spirit, we shall ourselves become in our own measure the ministers of like benefits to others, be they many or few, be they in the obscurer or the more distinguished walks of life,—who are united to us by social ties, and are within the sphere of our personal influence.
—Cardinal Newman.
A VISION RISES
By Robert G. Ingersoll
A vision of the future rises.... I see a world where thrones have crumbled and where kings are dust, the aristocracy of idleness has perished from the earth.
I see a world without a slave, man at last is free. Nature’s forces have by science been enslaved, lightning and light, wind and wave, frost and flame, and all the secret subtle powers of the earth and air are the tireless toilers for the human race.
I see a world at peace, adorned with every form of art, with music’s myriad voices thrilled, while lips are rich with words of love and truth; a world in which no exile sighs, no prisoner mourns; a world on which the gibbet’s shadow does not fall; a world where labor reaps its full reward, where work and worth go hand in hand, where the poor girl, trying to win bread with a needle—the needle that has been called “the asp for the breast of the poor”—is not driven to the desperate choice of crime or death or suicide or shame.
I see a world without the beggar’s outstretched palm, the miser’s heartless, stony stare, the piteous wail of want, the livid lips of lies, the cruel eyes of scorn.
I see a race without disease of flesh or brain—shapely and fair, married harmony of form and function, and as I look, life lengthens, joy deepens, love canopies the earth; and over all in the great dome shines the eternal star of human hope.
CREED OF AMERICANISM
I have faith that this government of ours was divinely ordained to disclose whether men are by nature fitted or can by education be made fit for self-government; to teach Jew and Greek, bondman and free, alike, the essential equality of all men before the law and to be tender and true to humanity everywhere and under all circumstances; to reveal that service is the highest reward of life....
I believe that the world, now advancing and now retreating, is nevertheless moving forward to a far-off divine event wherein the tongues of Babel will again be blended in the language of a common brotherhood; and I believe that I can reach the highest ideal of my tradition and my lineage as an American—as a man, as a citizen and as a public official—when I judge my fellowmen without malice and with charity, when I worry more about my own motives and conduct and less about the motives and conduct of others. The time I am liable to be wholly wrong is when I know that I am absolutely right....
I believe there is no finer form of government than the one under which we live and that I ought to be willing to live or to die, as God decrees, that it may not perish from off the earth through treachery within or through assault without; and I believe that though my first right is to be a partisan, that my first duty, when the only principles on which free government can rest are being strained, is to be a patriot and to follow in a wilderness of words that clear call which bids me guard and defend the ark of our national covenant.—From “Vice-President Marshall’s Inaugural Address.”
WHAT IS OUR COUNTRY
By Governor Newton Booth
(Extract from speech delivered at Sacramento, Calif., August 14, 1862.)
What is our country? Not alone the land and the sea, the lakes and rivers, and valleys and mountains; not alone the people, their customs and laws; not alone the memories of the past, the hopes of the future: it is something more than all these combined. It is a divine abstraction. You cannot tell what it is; but let its flag rustle above your head, you feel its living presence in your hearts. They tell us that our country must die; that the sun and the stars will look down upon the great republic no more; that already the black eagles of despotism are gathering in our political sky; that, even now, kings and emperors are casting lots for the garments of our national glory. It shall not be! Not yet, not yet, shall the nations lay the bleeding corpse of our country in the tomb. If they could, angels would roll the stone from the mouth of the sepulcher. It would burst the casements of the grave and come forth a living presence, “redeemed, regenerated, disenthralled.” Not yet, not yet shall the republic die! The heavens are not darkened, the stones are not rent! It shall live, the incarnation of freedom; it shall live, the embodiment of the power and majesty of the people. Baptized anew, it shall stand a thousand years to come, the Colossus of the nations,—its feet upon the continents, its scepter over the seas, its forehead among the stars!—From “Notable Speeches by Notable Speakers of the Greater West,” by kind permission of the publishers; The Harr Wagner Company, San Francisco.
PIONEER CELEBRATION SPEECH
By Frederick Palmer Tracey
(Delivered before the society of California Pioneers, September 9, 1858, at their celebration of the eighth anniversary of the admission of the state into the Union.)
Mr. President, and Members of the Society of California Pioneers: The great Napoleon said, “I will review at Cherbourg the marvels of Egypt,” and that saying, just now inscribed upon the pedestal of his statue standing amidst the new and massive fortifications of Cherbourg, startles England as a menace of war. England may rest in quiet. There will be no attempt to renew the marvels of Bonaparte’s Egyptian campaign. But both Napoleons may have dreamed that in the gigantic moles of Cherbourg they might rival the grandeur and strength of the Pyramids, and in its sculptures the glorious beauty of Memnon and the Sphinx. And, truly, the vast dead marvels of Egypt’s architecture may be rivaled. Other tombs and temples may be hewn in the rocks; other columns and obelisks may rise in beauty; other sphinxes may in silence propose their eternal riddles to other lands; and other pyramids may lift their mountain forms over the hushed plains crouching at their feet. Greater marvels even than Egypt ever saw may be born of necessity and science, and not Cherbourg alone, but this and other lands may yet behold them.
But who, in any age or country, or with any people, shall renew the marvels of California, and give to the world a second example of a nation so suddenly created, gifted with the strength of Hercules in its cradle,—born in the purple of its empire that shall endure forever? A little more than ten years ago, California lay in the indolence and silence of that summer noonday in which she had been basking for ages. A few idle villages slept by the shores of her bays; a few squalid ranches dotted the interior with patches of wretched cultivation. There were herds of cattle in her valleys, but they were almost valueless for the want of a market. There were churches, but their chiming bells woke only the echoes of a vast solitude. The sun ripened only the harvest of wild oats on the hills, and the beasts of prey made their lairs in security close by the abodes of men. Seldom did the vaquero in his solitary rounds hear the dip of the oar upon our rivers. Silence, deep and everlasting, brooded over all the land, and the lone oaks on the hills appeared like sentinels keeping guard around the sleeping camp of nature.
The cession of the country to the United States by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and the discovery of gold in the early part of the year of 1848, changed the whole scene as if by the power of magic. As in the naumachia of old time, the dry arena was instantly converted into a great lake on which contending navies struggled for the mastery; so, instantly on the discovery of gold, California was filled with people as if they had risen from the earth. The port of San Francisco was crowded with vessels. The rivers were alive with the multitudes that made them their highway, and din of commerce broke forever the silence of centuries. It seemed as if the people had stolen the lamp of Aladdin, and wished for the creation, not of palaces merely, but of royal cities, and an empire of which these should be the chief places; and at their wish, the cities of our state arose, not by slow, toilsome growth, but complete and princely at their very birth. The rattle of the shovel and the pick was heard in every mountain gorge, and a wide stream of gold flowed from the Sierra to the sea. The plains, rejoicing in their marriage to industry, bore fruitfully their yellow harvests. Villages, hamlets, farmhouses, schools, and churches sprang up everywhere; wharves were built, roads were opened; stage-coaches and steamers crowded all profitable routes; lands, houses, and labor rose to an enormous value; and plenty, with her blessings, crowned the rolling year.
I paint no exaggerated picture of this magical change. We have seen it with our eyes; and though it seems like a dream, so is it unlike anything in the history of the world, in the range of human experience, or in the field where imagination is wont to revel. We know that it is all true, and its truth is its greatest marvel.
Yet it is not to be concealed that we have reason to fear that California’s future may not be as prosperous as her past. If free institutions shall be established here in the simplicity of truth and justice; if public morality shall be substituted for the wild, passionate life of our earlier times; if industry and frugality shall expel indolence and thriftlessness from among us; if the people shall be made to feel that California is their home, and be controlled by the great ambition of making it a home worth loving and defending; if we shall be united for the promotion and protection of our own state interests, and shall banish from among us all influence of those who do not belong to us,—then indeed we cannot fail to secure a glorious future for our young state. But if we fail in the great duties of upright men and patriotic citizens, we can only expect to—
“Run anew the evil race the old nations ran;
And die, like them, of unbelief in God and wrong of man.”
That California has the material resources to make her not merely one of the first, but the very first, of the states of the Union, no one can doubt; but the fostering care of the general government, and the exertion of all the energies of our own people will be required to develop those resources and make our state what it is capable of becoming. I have dreamed of the time when that great highway of commerce around the Cape of Good Hope, opened to the world by the Portuguese navigators of the fifteenth century, should be abandoned, and long caravans of merchant ships, treading the desert ocean that lies at our west, should bring to our wharves the merchandise of China and the Indies, and give to us the profits of that vast trade which has built so many of the cities of Europe and of Asia; when along the great Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, from San Francisco to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to the Atlantic seaboard, the transit of this wealth of the world, like a turbid stream turned through our miners’ sluice-boxes, should everywhere deposit gold as it passed. If California and the general government shall ever be aroused upon this subject, and this great railway—the mightiest in its results of any enterprise ever projected by man—shall be completed, a revolution will be accomplished in our state, the marvels of which will be second only to those that accompanied our first settlement of the territory. Our population, no longer stinted to a few hundred thousand, will suddenly be counted by millions. Every valley will be fat with grain, and the yellow harvest will wave on every hillside. The hamlets will rise to villages, the villages to towns, and the towns to regal cities. Like the redwoods of our mountains, the masts of the vessels of all nations will be forests in our ports, and the white sails in the offing shall flock together as white doves when they come home to their nests. Then, capital will seek investment among us, and enterprise and industry will add wealth to wealth. Then will the hidden riches of the mines be explored, and larger and more secure investments afford a profit that now is hardly dreamed of. Every resource of the state will be developed, and California will become the mistress of the Pacific, rivaling not merely the richest commercial states of our own confederacy, but the most powerful maritime nations that sit by the shores of the Atlantic.
Such California once was; such California yet may be. You, pioneers, who meet to-day to celebrate the eighth anniversary of her admission as a state of the Union,—you, and those whom you represent, are the founders of this new commonwealth, and on the direction you give her institutions and her enterprise her destiny for good or evil will depend.
I congratulate you, Pioneers of California, on the proud position you occupy.
“You are living, you are dwelling,
In a grand and awful time,
In an age on ages telling,
To be living is sublime.”
You are presiding at the birth of a nation; you shape its destinies and mold its future according to your own will. Your works will speak for you in the coming ages. If you make California glorious, you will be immortal; if you make her base and vile, she will return her shame on your own heads.
It was my lot, in 1848, to witness the Revolution that overturned the throne of France, and drove Louis Philippe into exile, and I thought it the fortune of a lifetime to be present at the downfall of a great government. But how much more is the blood of ambition stirred by the creation of an empire,—of an empire that for centuries to come is to sit the undisputed mistress of these vast seas that spread themselves at our feet!
Pioneers, the men who come after you will rule only the hour in which they live. You are the masters of the approaching centuries. They come bending like slaves at your feet, and wait to know your pleasure. It is yours, if you will, to fill those centuries with the glory of California and your own high renown. All that you do in these early plastic times of the state will remain stamped upon her forever, and you sit here, masters, while the monuments of your own immortal fame are being built.
Pioneers of California, the eyes of the world are fixed upon this young state; they are fixed upon you. A great trust is committed to your hands by the events that have made you pioneers. Take care that you discharge that trust with honor to yourselves, and so that California may achieve the glorious destiny that is her due. Take care that you so conduct the youth of this state, that, centuries hereafter, your descendants may say proudly of their ancestors, “He came in with the pioneers.”—From “Notable Speeches by Notable Speakers of the Greater West,” by the kind permission of the publisher, the Harr Wagner Company, San Francisco.
[Frederick Palmer Tracy was a California pioneer, and attorney-at-law in San Francisco, and one of the founders of the Republican party in California. He was an eloquent political speaker in the early days when his party was in a hopeless minority. He was a member of the California delegation to the Chicago convention which nominated Abraham Lincoln for President of the United States, and was appointed on the Committee on Platform and Resolutions. He drafted the famous platform of that convention, which was adopted by the committee as he wrote it, with only slight changes. He was engaged in the Lincoln campaign to stump the state of New York, and died during that campaign, worn out by exposure and loss of sleep.]
THE REDWOODS
By W. H. L. Barnes
(Delivered at a midsummer “jinks” of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco.)
The possessor of a name more ancient than the crusaders will show you, in the land of his birth, ancestral trees that surround his lordly domain, and proudly exhibit some gnarled and ugly oak, which by him is associated with some distant event in his own family, or with the history of the hoary races of the brave nation of which he forms a part. Here his ancestors builded a castle before the Middle Ages, with defensive moat and parapet, with keep and dungeon, all long since fallen into ruin,—melted in the unperceived decay of ages, or bruised into it by the vigor of the battering-ram of some gallant and feudal company.
He will say to you, “All these are mine. They are part of my race, and my race is of them.” But what are all his possessions—castle, moat, dungeon, or gnarled oak—beside the ancient brotherhood of venerable trees to which we have been admitted, and whose stately silence we have been permitted to break? Our trees were old before the Roman invaded Britain; old before the Saxon followed Hengist and Horsa; old before the Vikings sailed the northern seas. For ages piled upon ages, even before letters were known, before history commenced to make its record of the doings of nations and races, these trees and their ancestors builded and renewed their leafy castles.
The groupings of the present monarchs of the forest show that these are but the descendants of still more ancient growths; were once nothing but saplings that sprung from the superabundant life of some giant trunk long since vanished, and whose grave is sentineled by his stalwart children. How shall we measure the vigor and force which they possess? How shall we comprehend by what method the stately body, ever rising in monumental force toward the skies, draws its being from the deep and busy fingers of the roots, and from them lifts the alchemized earth and water higher and still higher, until both feed and nourish the smallest leaf and spear-point of the topmost shaft,—spear-point that, in its turn, is destined in some future age to become a stalwart trunk, crowding with its growth ever upward and onward towards the stars?
Who shall tell how, through the eons of the long ago, these trees have been silent and majestic watchers of the night and dawn and day of the world’s life? How shall we conjecture how long they have been welcoming the sun in his rising, and have caught his last and lingering caress as he has disappeared in the glory of the evening sky? How long have they been the vigil keepers of the night, and watched the silent constellations sailing through the immensity of space? Who shall tell us if these trees caught, perhaps, the earliest song of the stars of the morning, while above and beyond them, unnumbered comet and meteor have shone and vanished?
How came these trees to this continent? Have they ever lived and burgeoned in some other happy land? or are they the fruit of one sole and giant extravagance of nature, exulting in the uppermost luxury of force, and reveling in the very fullness of all power? Shall man solve the mystery? Nature is full of lessons yet to be learned, but nowhere in air or earth or water is there more awe-inspiring strangeness than in these great growths whose wonder we have studied, but with study fruitless of revelation.
To me, during the days we spent in the forest, the contemplation of the redwoods was never for a moment wearisome. I have looked up along their marvelous length in the early morning, when the frondent and topmost spear caught the first glimpse of the sun’s glory, and I have seen his afternoon rays flashing and glinting on emerald bough and purple trunk, and at last losing themselves in the depths of a solemn and impenetrable shade. I have lain at night on the dry earth and looked up at the closing vista of the dark boughs fretting the moonlight and shutting out the sparkle of the stars, until their weird shapes seemed summited in their very pathway; and I saw, when Pan killed Care upon the mountain-side that overhung the grove, such an illumination of the glory of the trees in purple and crimson and scarlet as shall forever make the ablest effort of the scenic artist stale, tawdry, unendurable.
THE SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS
By Abraham Lincoln
(Delivered from the steps of the Capitol at Washington, 1865.)
Fellow Countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued seemed very fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.
The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.
On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avoid it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it with war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came. One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease when, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern there any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be repaid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphans, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
TOUSSAINT L’OUVERTURE
By Wendell Phillips
If I were to tell you the story of Napoleon, I should take it from the lips of Frenchmen, who find no language rich enough to paint the great captain of the nineteenth century. Were I to tell you the story of Washington, I should take it from your hearts,—you who think no marble white enough on which to carve the name of the father of his country. But I am to tell you the story of a negro, Toussaint L’Ouverture, who has left hardly one written line. I am to glean it from the reluctant testimony of his enemies,—men who despised him because he was a negro and a slave, hated him because he had beaten them in battle.
Cromwell manufactured his own army. Napoleon, at the age of twenty-seven, was placed at the head of the best troops Europe ever saw. Cromwell never saw an army till he was forty; this man never saw a soldier till he was fifty. Cromwell manufactured his own army—out of what? England,—the best blood in Europe. Out of the middle class of Englishmen,—the best blood of the island. And with it he conquered what? Englishmen,—their equals. This man manufactured his army out of what? Out of what you call the despicable race of negroes, debased, demoralized by two hundred years of slavery, one hundred thousand of them imported into the island within four years, unable to speak a dialect intelligible even to each other. Yet out of this mixed and, as you say, despicable mass, he forged a thunderbolt, and hurled it at what? At the proudest blood in Europe, the Spaniard, and sent him home conquered; at the most warlike blood in Europe, the French, and put them under his feet; at the pluckiest blood in Europe, the English, and they skulked home to Jamaica. Now, if Cromwell was a general, this man was a soldier.
Now, blue-eyed Saxon, proud of your age, go back with me to the commencement of the century, and select what statesman you please. Let him be either American or European; let him have the ripest training of university routine; let him add to it the better education of practical life; crown his temples with the silver locks of seventy years, and show me the man of Saxon lineage for whom his most sanguine admirer will wreathe a laurel, rich as embittered foes have placed on the brow of this negro,—rare military skill, profound knowledge of human nature, content to blot out all party distinctions, and trust a state to the blood of his sons,—anticipating Sir Robert Peel fifty years, and taking his station by the side of Roger Williams, before any Englishman or American had won the right; and yet this is the record which the history of rival States makes up for this inspired black of St. Domingo.
Some doubt the courage of the negro. Go to Hayti, and stand on those fifty thousand graves of the best soldiers France ever had, and ask them what they think of the negro’s courage.
I would call him Napoleon, but Napoleon made his way to empire over broken oaths and through a sea of blood. This man never broke his word. I would call him Cromwell, but Cromwell was only a soldier, and the state he founded went down with him into his grave. I would call him Washington, but the great Virginian held slaves. This man risked his empire rather than permit the slave-trade in the humblest village of his dominions.
You think me a fanatic, for you read history, not with your eyes, but with your prejudices. But fifty years hence, when Truth gets a hearing, the Muse of history will put Phocion for the Greek, Brutus for the Roman, Hampden for England, Lafayette for France, choose Washington as the bright consummate flower of our earlier civilization, then, dipping her pen in the sunlight, will write in the clear blue, above them all, the name of the soldier, the statesman, the martyr, Toussaint L’Ouverture.
THE TWO GEORGES
By W. H. Rhodes
Between the years of our Lord 1730 and 1740, two men were born on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean, whose lives were destined to exert a commanding influence on the age in which they lived, as well as to control the fortunes of many succeeding generations.
One was by birth a plain peasant, the son of a Virginia farmer; the other an hereditary Prince, and the heir of an immense empire.
Go with me for one moment to the crowded and splendid metropolis of England. It is the evening of the 4th of June, 1734. Some joyful event must have occurred, for the bells are ringing merrily, and the inhabitants are dressed in holiday attire. Nor is the circumstance of a private nature, for banners are everywhere displayed, the vast city is illuminated, and a thousand cannon are proclaiming it from their iron throats. The population seems frantic with joy, and rush tumultuously into each other’s arms, in token of a national jubilee. Tens of thousands are hurrying along toward a splendid marble pile, situated on a commanding eminence, near the River Thames, whilst from the loftiest towers of St. James’s Palace the national ensigns of St. George and the Red Cross are seen floating on the breeze. Within one of the most gorgeously furnished apartments of that royal abode, the wife of Frederic, Prince of Wales, and heir apparent to the British Empire, has just been delivered of a son. The scions of royalty crowd into the bed-chamber, and solemnly attest the event as one on which the destiny of a great empire is suspended. The corridors are thronged with dukes, and nobles, and soldiers, and courtiers. A Royal Proclamation soon follows, commemorating the event, and commanding British subjects everywhere, who acknowledge the honor of Brunswick, to rejoice, and give thanks to God for safely ushering into existence George William Frederic, heir presumptive of the United crowns of Great Britain and Ireland.
Just twenty-two years afterward that child ascended the throne of his ancestors as King George the Third.
Let us now turn our eyes to the Western Continent, and contemplate a scene of similar import, but under circumstances of a totally different character. It is the 22nd of February, 1732. The locality is a distant colony, the spot the verge of an immense, untrodden and unexplored wilderness, the habitation a log cabin, with its chinks filled in with clay, and its sloping roof patched over with clapboards. Snow covers the ground, and a chill wintry wind is drifting the flakes, and moaning through the forest. Two immense chimneys stand at either end of the house, and give promise of cheerful comfort and primitive hospitality within, totally in contrast with external nature. There are but four small rooms in the dwelling, in one of which Mary Ball, the wife of Augustine Washington, has just given birth to a son. No dukes or marquises or earls are there to attest the humble event. There are no princes of the blood to wrap the infant in the insignia of royalty, and fold about his limbs the tapestried escutcheon of a kingdom. His first breath is not drawn in the center of a mighty capitol, the air laden with perfume, and trembling to the tones of soft music and the “murmurs of low fountains.” But the child is received from its mother’s womb by hands embrowned with honest labor, and laid upon a lowly couch, indicative only of a back-woodsman’s home and an American’s inheritance. He, too, is christened George, and forty-three years afterward took command of the American forces assembled on the plains of old Cambridge.
But if their births were dissimilar, their rearing and education were still more unlike.
From his earliest recollection the Prince heard only the language of flattery, moved about from palace to palace, just as caprice dictated, slept upon the cygnet’s down, and grew up in indolence, self-will and vanity, a dictator from his cradle. The peasant boy, on the other hand, was taught from his infancy that labor was honorable, and hardships indispensable to vigorous health. He early learned to sleep alone amid the dangers of a boundless wilderness, a stone for his pillow, and the naked sod his bed; whilst the voices of untamed nature around him sang his morning and his evening hymns. Truth, courage and constancy were early implanted in his mind by a mother’s counsels, and the important lesson of life was taught by a father’s example, that when existence ceases to be useful it ceases to be happy.
Early manhood ushered them both into active life; the one as king over extensive dominions, the other as a modest, careful, and honest district surveyor.
Having traced the two Georges to the threshold of their careers, let us now proceed one step further, and take note of the first great public event in the lives of each.
For a long time preceding the year 1753 the French had laid claim to all the North American continent west of the Alleghany Mountains, stretching in an unbroken line from Canada to Louisiana. The English strenuously denied this right, and when the French commandant on the Ohio, in 1753, commenced erecting a fort near where the present city of Pittsburgh stands, and proceeded to capture certain English traders, and expel them from the country, Dinwiddie, Governor of Virginia, deemed it necessary to dispatch an agent on a diplomatic visit to the French commandant and demand by what authority he acted, by what title he claimed the country, and order him immediately to evacuate the territory.
George Washington, then only in his twenty-second year, was selected by the governor for this important mission.
It is unnecessary to follow him, in all his perils, during his wintry march through the wilderness. The historian of his life has painted in imperishable colors his courage, his sagacity, his wonderful coolness in the midst of danger, and the success which crowned his undertaking. Memory loves to follow him through the trackless wilds of the forest, accompanied by only a single companion, and making his way through wintry snows, in the midst of hostile savages and wild beasts, for more than five hundred miles, to the residence of the French commander. How often do we not shudder, as we behold the treacherous Indian guide, on his return, deliberately raising his rifle, and leveling it at that majestic form; thus endeavoring, by an act of treachery and cowardice, to deprive Virginia of her young hero! And oh! with what fervent prayers do we not implore a kind Providence to watch over his desperate encounter with the floating ice, at midnight, in the swollen torrent of the Alleghany, and rescue him from the wave and the storm. Standing bareheaded on the frail craft, whilst in the act of dashing aside some floating ice that threatened to engulf him, the treacherous oar was broken in his hand, and he is precipitated many feet into the boiling current. Save! oh, save him, heaven! for the destinies of millions yet unborn hang upon that noble arm!
Let us now recross the ocean. In the early part of the year 1764, a ministerial crisis occurs in England, and Lord Bute, the favorite of the British monarch, is driven from the administration of the government. The troubles with the American colonists have also just commenced to excite attention, and the young King grows angry, perplexed, and greatly irritated. A few days after this, a rumor starts into circulation that the monarch is sick. His attendants look gloomy, his friends terrified, and even his physicians exhibit symptoms of doubt and danger. Yet he has no fever, and is daily observed walking with uncertain and agitated step along the corridors of the palace. His conduct becomes gradually more and more strange, until doubt gives place to certainty, and the royal medical staff report to a select committee of the House of Commons that the King is threatened with insanity. For six weeks the cloud obscures his mental faculties, depriving him of all interference with the administration of the government, and betokening a sad disaster in the future. His reason is finally restored, but frequent fits of passion, pride and obstinacy indicate but too surely that the disease is deep-seated, and a radical cure impossible.
Not long after his return from the West, Washington was offered the chief command of the forces about to be raised in Virginia, to expel the French; but, with his usual modesty, he declined the appointment, on account of his extreme youth, but consented to take the post of lieutenant-colonel. Shortly afterward, on the death of Colonel Fry, he was promoted to the chief command, but through no solicitations of his own. Subsequently, when the war between France and England broke out in Europe, the principal seat of hostilities was transferred to America, and his majesty, George III, sent over a large body of troops, under the command of favorite officers. But this was not enough. An edict soon followed, denominated an “Order to settle the rank of the officers of His Majesty’s forces serving in America.” By one of the articles of this order, it was provided “that all officers commissioned by the King should take precedence of those of the same grade commissioned by the governors of the respective colonies, although their commissions might be of junior date;” and it was further provided, that “when the troops served together, the provincial officers should enjoy no rank at all.” This order was scarcely promulgated—indeed, before the ink was dry—ere the Governor of Virginia received a communication informing him that George Washington was no longer a soldier. Entreaties, exhortations and threats were all lavished upon him in vain; and to those who, in their expostulations, spoke of the defenseless frontiers of his native state, he patriotically but nobly replied: “I will serve my country when I can do so without dishonor.”
In contrast with this attitude of Washington, look at the conduct of George the Third respecting the colonies, after the passage of the Stamp Act. This act was no sooner proclaimed in America, than the most violent opposition was manifested, and combinations for the purpose of effectual resistance were rapidly organized from Massachusetts to Georgia. The leading English patriots, among whom were Burke and Barré, protested against the folly of forcing the colonies into rebellion, and the city of London presented a petition to the king, praying him to dismiss the Granville ministry, and repeal the obnoxious act. “It is with the utmost astonishment,” replied the king, “that I find any of my subjects capable of encouraging the rebellious disposition that unhappily exists in some of my North American colonies. Having entire confidence in the wisdom of my parliament, the great council of the realm, I will steadily pursue those measures which they have recommended for the support of the constitutional rights of Great Britain.” He heeded not the memorable words of Burke, that afterward became prophetic. “There are moments,” exclaimed this great statesman, “critical moments in the fortunes of all states, when they who are too weak to contribute to your prosperity may yet be strong enough to complete your ruin.” The Boston port bill passed, and the first blood was spilt at Lexington.
It is unnecessary to review in detail the Revolution. Let us pass to the social position of the two Georges in after-life.
On the 2d of August, 1786, as the king was alighting from his carriage at the gate of St. James, an attempt was made on his life by a woman named Margaret Nicholson, who, under pretense of presenting a petition, endeavored to stab him with a knife which was concealed in the paper. The weapon was an old one, and so rusty that, on striking the vest of the king, it bent double, and thus preserved his life. On the 29th of October, 1795, whilst his majesty was proceeding to the House of Lords, a ball passed through both windows of the carriage. On his return to St. James the mob threw stones into the carriage, several of which struck the king, and one lodged in the cuff of his coat. The state carriage was completely demolished by the mob. But it was on the 15th of May, 1800, that George the Third made his narrowest escapes. In the morning of that day, whilst attending the field exercise of a battalion of guards, one of the soldiers loaded his piece with a bullet and discharged it at the king. The ball fortunately missed its aim, and lodged in the thigh of a gentleman who was standing in the rear. In the evening of the same day a more alarming circumstance occurred at the Drury Lane Theater. At the moment when the king entered the royal box, a man in the pit, on the right-hand side of the orchestra, suddenly stood up and discharged a large horse-pistol at him. The hand of the would-be assassin was thrown up by a by-stander, and the ball entered the box just above the head of the king.
Such were the public manifestations of affection for this royal tyrant. He was finally attacked by an enemy that could not be thwarted, and on the 20th of December, 1810, he became a confirmed lunatic. In this dreadful condition he lingered until January, 1820, when he died, having been the most unpopular, unwise and obstinate sovereign that ever disgraced the English throne. He was forgotten as soon as life left his body, and was hurriedly buried with that empty pomp which but too often attends a despot to the grave.
The mind, in passing from the unhonored grave of the prince to the last resting-place of the peasant boy, leaps from a kingdom of darkness to one of light.
Let us now return to the career of Washington. Throughout the Revolutionary War he carried in his hand, like Atropos, the destinies of millions; he bore on his shoulders, like Atlas, the weight of a world. It is unnecessary to follow him throughout his subsequent career. Honored again and again by the people of the land he had redeemed from thraldom, he has taken his place in death by the side of the wisest and best of the world’s benefactors. Assassins did not unglory him in life, nor has oblivion drawn her mantle over him in death. The names of his great battlefields have become nursery words, and his principles have imbedded themselves forever in the national character. Every pulsation of our hearts beats true to his memory. His mementoes are everywhere around and about us. Distant as we are from the green fields of his native Westmoreland, the circle of his renown has spread far beyond our borders. In climes where the torch of science was never kindled; on shores still buried in primeval bloom; amongst barbarians where the face of liberty was never seen, the Christian missionary of America, roused perhaps from his holy duties by the distant echo of the national salute, this day thundering amidst the billows of every sea, or dazzled by the gleam of his country’s banner, this day floating in every wind of heaven, pauses over his task as a Christian, and whilst memory kindles in his bosom the fires of patriotism, pronounces in the ear of the enslaved pagan the venerated name of Washington.
Wherever tyranny shall lift its Medusan head, wherever treason shall plot its hellish schemes, wherever disunion shall unfurl its tattered ensign, there, oh there, sow his deeds in the hearts of patriots and republicans. For from these there shall spring, as from the dragon’s teeth sown by Cadmus of old on the plains of Heber, vast armies of invincible heroes, sworn upon the altar and tomb at Mount Vernon, to live as freemen, or as such to die!
THE LESSONS OF THE TRAGEDY
(The Murder of President McKinley)
By David Starr Jordan
We meet to-day under the sway of a number of different emotions. We would express our sorrow at the untimely death of a good man. We would show our regret that our nation has lost the Chief Magistrate of its choice. We would express our sympathy with the gentle woman who has been suddenly bereft of the kindest and most considerate of husbands. We are filled with shame that in our Republic, the land where all men are free and equal wherever they behave themselves as men, the land which has no rulers save the public servants of its own choosing, a deed like this should be possible. We would express our detestation of that kind of political and social agitation which finds no method of working reform save through intimidation and killing. We would wish to find the true lessons of this event and would not let even the least of them fall on our ears unheeded.
And one plain lesson in this: Under democracy all violence is treason. Whosoever throws a stone at a scab teamster, whosoever fires a shot at the President of the United States, is an enemy of the Republic. He is guilty of high treason in his heart, and treason in thought works itself out in lawlessness of action.
The central fact of all democracy is agreement with law. It is our law; we have made it. If it is wrong we can change it, but the compact of democracy is that we change it in peace. “The sole source of power under God is the consent of the governed.” This was written by Cromwell across the statute books of Parliament. This our fathers wrote in other words in our own Constitution. The will of the people is the sole source of any statute you or I may be called on to obey. It is the decree of no army, the dictum of no president. It is the work of no aristocracy; not of blood nor of wealth. It is simply our own understanding that we have to do right, shall behave justly, shall live and let our neighbor live. If our law is tyrannous, it is our ignorance which has made it so. Let it pinch a little and we shall find out what hurts us. Then it will be time to change. Laws are made through the ballot, and through the ballot we can unmake them. There is no other honest way, no other way that is safe, and no other way that is effective. To break the peace is to invite tyranny. Lawlessness is the expression of weakness, of ignorance, of unpatriotism. If tyranny provokes anarchy, so does anarchy necessitate tyranny. Confusion brings the man on horseback. It was to keep away both anarchy and tyranny that the public school was established in America.
Three times has our nation been called upon to pass into the shadow of humiliation, and each time in the past it has learned its severe lesson. When Lincoln fell, slavery perished. To the American of to-day human slavery in a land of civilization is almost an impossible conception, yet many of us who think ourselves still young can remember when half of this land held other men in bondage and the dearest hope of freedom was that such things should not go on forever. I can remember when we looked forward to the time when “at least the present form of slavery should be no more.” For democracy and slavery could not subsist together. The Union could not stand—half slave, half free.
The last words of Garfield were these: Strangulatus pro Republica. (Slain for the Republic.) The feudal tyranny of the spoils system which had made republican administration a farce, has not had, since Garfield’s time, a public defender. It has not vanished from our politics, but its place is where it belongs—among the petty wrongs of maladministration.
Again a president is slain for the Republic—and the lesson is the homely one of peace and order, patience and justice, respect for ourselves through respect for the law, for public welfare, and for public right.
For this country is passing through a time of storm and stress, a flurry of lawless sensationalism. The irresponsible journalism, the industrial wars, the display of hastily-gotten wealth, the grasping monopoly, the walking delegate, the vulgar cartoon, the foul-mouthed agitator, the sympathetic strike, the unsympathetic lockout, are all symptoms of a single disease—the loss of patriotism, the decay of the sense of justice. As in other cases, the symptoms feed the disease, as well as indicate it. The deed of violence breeds more deeds of violence; anarchy provokes hysteria, and hysteria makes anarchy. The unfounded scandal sets a hundred tongues to wagging, and the seepage from the gutter reaches a thousand homes.
The journal for the weak-minded and debased makes heroes of those of its class who carry folly over into crime. The half-crazy egotist imagines himself a regicide, and his neighbor with the clean shirt is his oppressor and therefore his natural victim. Usually his heart fails him, and his madness spends itself in foul words. Sometimes it does not, and the world stands aghast. But it is not alone against the Chief Magistrate that these thoughts and deeds are directed. There are usually others within closer range. There is scarcely a man in our country, prominent in any way, statesman, banker, merchant, railway manager, clergyman, teacher even, that has not, somewhere, his would-be Nemesis, some lunatic, with a sensational newspaper and a pistol, prepared to take his life.
The gospel of discontent has no place within our Republic. It is true, as has often been said, that discontent is the cause of human progress. It is truer still, as Mr. John P. Irish has lately pointed out, that discontent may be good or bad, according to its relation to the individual man. There is a noble discontent which a man turns against himself. It leads the man who fails to examine his own weaknesses, to make the needed repairs in himself, then to take up the struggle again. There is a cowardly discontent which leads a man to blame all failure on his prosperous neighbor or on society at large, as if a social system existed apart from the men who make it. This is the sort of discontent to which the agitator appeals, that finds its stimulus in sensational journalism. It is that which feeds the frenzy of the assassin who would work revenge on society by destroying its accepted head.
It is not theoretical anarchism or socialism or any other “ism” which is responsible for this. Many of the gentlest spirits in the world today call themselves anarchists, because they look forward to the time when personal meekness shall take the place of all statutes. The gentle anarchism of the optimistic philosopher is not that which confronts us to-day. It is the anarchy of destruction, the hatred of class for class; a hatred that rests only on distorted imagination, for, after all is said, there are no classes in America. It is the hatred imported from the Old World, excited by walking delegates whose purpose it is to carry a torch through society; a hatred fanned by agitators of whatever sort, unpractical dreamers or conscienceless scoundrels, exploited in the newspapers, abetted by so-called high society with its display of shoddy and greed, and intensified by the cold, hard selfishness that underlies the power of the trust. All these people, monopolists, social leaders, walking delegates, agitators, sensationalists, dreamers, are alien to our ways, outside the scope of our democracy, and enemies to good citizenship.
The real Americans, trying to live their lives in their own way, saving a little of their earnings and turning the rest into education and enjoyment, have many grievances in these days of grasping trusts and lawless unions. But of such free Americans our country is made. They are the people, not the trusts or the unions, nor their sensational go-betweens. This is their government, and the government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth. This is the people’s President—our President—who was killed, and it is ours to avenge him.
Not by lynch law on a large or small scale may we do it; not by anarchy or despotism; not by the destruction of all that call themselves anarchists, not by abridging freedom of the press nor by checking freedom of speech. Those who would wreak lawless vengeance on the anarchists are themselves anarchists and makers of anarchists.
We have laws enough already without making more for men to break. Let us get a little closer to the higher law. Let us respect our own rights and those of our neighbor a little better. Let us cease to tolerate sensational falsehood about our neighbor, or vulgar abuse of those in power. If we have bad rulers, let us change them peacefully. Let us put an end to every form of intimidation, wherever practiced. The cause that depends upon hurling bricks or epithets, or upon clubbing teamsters or derailing trains, cannot be a good cause. Even if originally in the right, the act of violence puts the partisans of such a cause in the wrong. No freeman ever needs to do such things as these. For the final meaning of democracy is peace on earth, good-will towards men. When we stand for justice among ourselves we can demand justice of the monopolistic trust. When we attack it with clear vision and cool speech we shall find the problem of combination for monopoly not greater than any other. And large or small, there is but one way for us to meet any problem: to choose wise men, clean men, cool men, the best we can secure through our method of the ballot, and then to trust the rest in their hands. The murder of the President has no direct connection with industrial war. Yet there is this connection, that all war, industrial or other, loosens the bonds of order, destroys mutual respect and trust, gives inspiration to anarchy, pushes a foul thought on to a foul word, a foul word on to a foul deed.
We trust now that the worst has come, the foulest deed has been committed, that our civil wars may stop, not through the victory of one side over the other, the trusts or the unions now set off against each other, but in the victory over both of the American people, of the great body of men and women who must pay for all, and who are the real sufferers in every phase of the struggle.
Strangulatus pro Republica—slain for the republic. The lesson is plain. It is for us to take it into our daily lives. It is the lesson of peace and good-will, the lesson of manliness and godliness. Let us take it to ourselves, and our neighbors will take it from us.
All civilized countries are ruled by public opinion. If there be a lapse in our civic duties, it is due to a lapse in our keenness of vision, our devotion to justice. This means a weakening of the individual man, the loss of the man himself in the movements of the mass. Perhaps the marvelous material development of our age, the achievements of huge coöperation which science has made possible, has overshadowed the importance of the individual man. If so, we have only to reassert ourselves. It is of men, individual men, clear-thinking, God-fearing, sound-acting men, and of these alone, that great nations can be made.—From “The Voice of the Scholar,” by kind permission of author and publishers, Paul Elder & Co., San Francisco.
WHAT IS TO BE THE DESTINY OF THIS REPUBLIC
By Judge Story
When we reflect on what has been and what is, how is it possible not to feel a profound sense of the responsibilities of this republic to all future ages! What vast motives press upon us for lofty efforts! What brilliant prospects invite our enthusiasm! What solemn warnings at once demand our vigilance and moderate our confidence!
The old world has already revealed to us, in its unsealed books, the beginning and end of all its marvelous struggles in the cause of liberty.
Greece! lovely Greece! “the land of scholars and the nurse of arms,” where sister republics, in fair processions, chanted the praise of liberty and the good—where and what is she? For two thousand years the oppressors have bound her to the earth. Her arts are no more. The last sad relics of her temples are but the barracks of a ruthless soldiery; the fragments of her columns and her palaces are in the dust, yet beautiful in ruin. She fell not when the mighty were upon her. Her sons were united at Thermopylæ and Marathon; and the tide of her triumph rolled back upon the Hellespont. She was conquered by her own factions. She fell by the hands of her own people. The man of Macedonia did not the work of destruction. It was already done by her own corruptions, banishments, and dissensions.
Rome! republican Rome! whose eagles glanced in the rising and setting sun,—where and what is she? The eternal city yet remains, proud even in her desolation, noble in her decline, venerable in the majesty of religion, and calm as in the composure of death. The malaria has traveled in the parts won by the destroyers. More than eighteen centuries have mourned over the loss of the empire. A mortal disease was upon her before Cæsar had crossed the Rubicon; and Brutus did not restore her health by the deep probings of the senate-chamber. The Goths, and Vandals, and Huns, the swarms of the north, completed only what was begun at home. Romans betrayed Rome. The legions were bought and sold, but the people offered the tribute-money.
And where are the republics of modern times, which cluster around immortal Italy? Venice and Genoa exist but in name. The Alps, indeed, look down upon the brave and peaceful Swiss, in their native fastnesses; but, the guarantee of their freedom is in their weakness, and not in their strength. The mountains are not easily crossed, and the valleys are not easily retained. When the invader comes, he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And Switzerland remains, with her simple institutions, a military road to climates scarcely worth a permanent possession, and protected by the jealousy of her neighbors.
We stand the latest, and, if we fall, probably the last experiment of self-government by the people. We have begun it under circumstances of the most auspicious nature. We are in the vigor of youth. Our growth has never been checked by the oppression of tyranny. Our constitutions never have been enfeebled by the vice or the luxuries of the world. Such as we are, we have been from the beginning, simple, hardy, intelligent, accustomed to self-government and self-respect. The Atlantic rolls between us and a formidable foe. Within our own territory, stretching through many degrees of latitude, we have the choice of many products, and many means of independence. The government is mild. The press is free. Religion is free. Knowledge reaches or may reach every home. What fairer prospects of success could be presented? What means more adequate to accomplish the sublime end? What more is necessary than for the people to preserve what they themselves have created?
Already has the age caught the spirit of our institutions. It has already ascended the Andes, and snuffed the breezes of both oceans. It has infused itself into the life-blood of Europe, and warmed the sunny plains of France and the lowlands of Holland. It has touched the philosophy of the north, and, moving onward to the south, has opened to Greece the lesson of her better days.
Can it be, that America, under such circumstances, can betray herself? That she is to be added to the catalogue of republics, the inscription upon whose ruin is: “They were, but they are not!” Forbid it, my countrymen: forbid it, Heaven!
I call upon you, fathers, by the shades of your ancestors, by the dear ashes which repose in this precious soil, by all you are, and all you hope to be, resist every project of disunion; resist every attempt to fetter your consciences, or smother your public schools, or extinguish your system of public instruction.
I call upon you, mothers, by that which never fails in woman, the love of your offspring, to teach them, as they climb your knees, or lean on your bosoms, the blessings of liberty. Swear them at the altar, as with their baptismal vows, to be true to their country, and never forsake her.
I call upon you, young men, to remember whose sons you are—whose inheritance you possess. Life can never be too short, which brings nothing but disgrace and oppression. Death never comes too soon, if necessary in defense of the liberties of our country.
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
(An oration delivered in San Francisco, May 30, 1901.)
By Samuel M. Shortridge
This day is consecrate to the nation’s dead and living soldiers. Uncovered beside the hallowed graves of those who fought and fell in the sacred cause of Union and Liberty, a people of brave men and loyal women stand with hearts oppressed with gratitude, and listen to the story of their heroes’ deeds and death. We come in thankfulness—matron and maid, sire and lad—to scatter fragrant flowers on the honored dust, and for the martyrs who sleep unknown but not unwept. We come to grasp the hands of the surviving heroes who responded to their country’s cry of anguish when the temple of liberty was assailed and her sacred altars desecrated; who endured the long, weary march, the cruel deprivations of the camp, the fevered heat of noon and the chilling cold at night; who stormed the frowning heights where treason was intrenched, and met upon an hundred fields the brave but misguided hosts that in madness and folly sought to destroy the edifice dedicated with the prayers and consecrated by the valor and blood of the patriot fathers; who carried the tattered but dear flag of their country through fire and flood and the “valley and shadow of death,” and paused not until it waved victorious in every state and was respected on every sea. We come to shed proud and happy tears for those who gladly gave up all for their imperiled country, in order to preserve the precious fruits of the Revolutionary struggle and to keep the flag of Washington triumphant in the sky. We come to welcome and to dower with our love the loyal and self-sacrificing men who left the plow, the forge, the desk, to rescue from the jaws of death the greatest, best, and truest republic that ever blessed the earth.
A common thought pervades all hearts. This is not a day for vainglorious boasting, but for gratitude and praise. We come in sorrow, not in anger, and our hearts are filled with sadness, not revenge. We are not here to upbraid, to accuse, to exult over the defeat of brethren and brave men, to denounce what is no more, to open wounds by the healing touch of Time made whole. No, no; Heaven forbid that this sacred day should stir our hearts to other than feelings of forgiveness, of gratitude, of pride, and of love. Rather let it be said we come to—
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain.
For those who died to save the republic, I have tears and eulogy; for those who died to overthrow it, I have tears and silence.
Not as citizens of a torn and discordant Union, not as blinded partisans, but as children of a common and reunited country, we gather to give expression of our gratitude to those who by their sacrifices and their martyrdom made this land the home of freedom, and the banner of the stars the symbol of one people, one constitution, and one destiny.
We are gathered here—the multitude has put on a suit of woe and stands beside the graves where heroes sleep—not to revive bitter memories, not to cause heartaches or awaken animosities, dead, let us fervently hope, forever, but for a better, worthier, and more patriotic purpose: to teach the rising generation that the dead fell not in vain; to impress upon their youthful hearts that America does not forget the travail through which, by the inscrutable wisdom of Heaven, she has passed, that she loves her loyal sons and daughters with more than Cornelian affection, and treasures them now, and will treasure them forever, as her unfading glory.
And so, my countrymen, we come to sorrow and to rejoice,—to sorrow over the loved and lost, to rejoice over their magnificent achievements and a Union saved and disenthralled by their devotion. As in the Roman days the wives and mothers went out upon the Appian Way to meet the home-returning legions,—some to fall upon the bosoms of husbands, fathers, or sons, and shed tears of joy, and some to search in vain for dear ones amid the broken, decimated ranks, but wept not, because they had died bravely in defense of Rome, her altars, and her fires,—so we welcome to-day the scarred and wounded, the remnant of hard-fought fields; we stretch forth our arms to embrace them; we cover them with garlands emblematic of our love, and scatter flowers in their way to tread upon.
But for the ones who answer not, who sleep the dreamless sleep of death, who died with the face of mother near their hearts, the name of country on their lips, what shall we say? They cannot hear our words nor see the offering of our hands; they are past all battles, all marches, all victories, all defeats; “on Fame’s eternal camping-ground their silent tents are spread,” and the troubled drum disturbs their sleep no more. And yet, O sacred shades of the unreplying dead, we feel your presence now. We hear the shot of Sumter that wakened all the land; we see you coming down from the mountains, up from the plains, and marching away to battle, leaving behind, alas; forever, faithful wife, loving children, aged mother, venerable father; we see you by the campfires dimly burning; we see you in the cannon-smoke and hurricane of war; we hear the command to charge, which you obey, how bravely, with bosom bared and parched, thirsty lips; we see you wounded and bleeding; we see you in the hospitals of fever and pain; we see you again with your regiment, with courage undaunted, your love of home and flag intensified; we see your comrades fall around you like flowers of spring cut down; we see you captured and hurried away; we see you wasting in awful dungeons, languishing in prison-pens; we catch the faint accent of your tongues as you murmur a prayer for your country and for the loved ones that come to you in your dreams; we see you encounter death in the gaunt and hideous form of starvation and quail not; we see you die! Die for what? Die for whom? Die for Union and Liberty. Die for us and generations yet to be.
Dead and living soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, you, you engaged in the holiest cause that ever received the approving smile of Heaven; you preserved the Union, “One and inseparable,” with all its blessed memories, with all its priceless benefits, with all its exalted and encouraging hopes. You carried the banner of your country, full high advanced through the darkest hour and wildest storm that ever overwhelmed a nation, until the returning and radiant morn of victory and peace blessed and hallowed it. Moved by the loftiest purposes, inspired by the sublimest sentiments, faithful unto death, you went forth, not to subjugate, not to enslave, not to tear down, but to rescue, to uplift, and to make the name of that liberty for which Warren died and to preserve which Lincoln gave the full measure of his devotion; in the name of all we are and hope to be,—the glorious present and the grander future,—we bow to-day and pay you the poor tribute of our love and tears.
All hail to the saviors of this beloved land! Humbly we lay our offerings on the dead. Reverently we invoke the blessing of Almighty God on the declining years of the living. Long may their eyes be gladdened by the flag they saved; long may their hearts be consoled by the assurance that, while the monuments reared to haughty pride and selfish ambition sink beneath the despoiling hand of time, the soldier’s humble grave, though unadorned by costly urn or marble shaft, will forever be his country’s hallowed ground, where future patriots shall come to rekindle the fires of their devotion and to renew and reaffirm their allegiance to the land by his sacrifices made truly, grandly free. And so we bow before the heroes who saved our country; we stand uncovered beside the graves of the martyrs who died in her sacred cause. Peace and honor to the living; honor and peace to the dead.
The Civil War, of the sad ravages and awful agony of which we are this day reminded, was the inevitable result of the “irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces,”—between freedom and slavery.
Removed sufficiently from those troublous days to look at facts calmly and to speak of them without anger, let us be just, let us be truthful. The courts had exalted slavery, had hedged it round by law, and nationalized it. In that most august tribunal—in that high place immortalized by the transcendent greatness of a Marshall and the unfathomed learning of a Story, which had witnessed the marvelous displays of oratory of Pinckney, Webster and Choate—in the Supreme Court of the United States—slavery met and vanquished freedom. The Dred Scott decision gave up this nation to bondage, and made it possible, under the law, to sell wives and babes in Faneuil Hall and to call the roll of slaves on the sacred spot where Warren fell! Thenceforth Congress could not interfere with slavery; states were powerless to prevent it. And thus it came to pass that in the land of Washington, Franklin, and Wayne, in the land of Adams, Henry, and Sherman, in the land whose sons died for liberty on a hundred fields—who stormed the walls of Quebec and left their blood on the snow at Valley Forge—in this our beloved land—in this republic—slavery was king. The time to gather the bitter fruit of the accursed upas tree planted at Jamestown in 1620 was near at hand.
An awful storm, pregnant with death and woe, was gathering, and the people sought a leader. They were sore distressed with a multitude of counsel, and they cried:
God give us men! A time like this demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue,
And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog,
In public duty and in private thinking!
For while the tricksters, with their thumb-worn creeds,
Their large professions, and their little deeds,
Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps!
Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps!
In the midst of mingled doubts and fears, when weak and timid politicians masquerading under the name of statesmen hesitated to grapple with the monstrous evil that threatened to advance upon and overwhelm the last remaining bulwarks of freedom, when the right and true path was well nigh lost sight of, and lovers of liberty were ranged under different banners, waiting for a Moses who should lead them out of Egyptian bondage, the Great Captain came. He came, and thenceforth all seemed clear. Simple in speech, plain in manner, straightforward in action, tender as a child, bold as a lion, fearless as a hero, at once courageous and humble, lofty and lowly, he came to speak and to act. Born of Southern parents who had witnessed the depressing and blighting effects of slavery, and reared in the broad prairies of the West, whose very winds sang Liberty, he realized the curse of bondage and the blessing of freedom. From the unfelled forest, from the log cabin and the country store, from humble forum and obscure dwelling, from out the ranks of the people, the Leader came. He came, and statesmen bowed before him; he spoke, and a nation hearkened to his counsel. Devoted to truth and the right, opposed to falsehood and the wrong, scorning the tricks and subterfuges of the self-seeking, and abhorring with his whole heart and soul the mean and base, loving his country with a devotion that made him forgetful of all else save the preservation of the Union, the incomparable Leader rose. In judicial tribunal and halls of state, in capital and village, in mansion and log cabin, in crowded cities, and out on the boundless prairies of the West, men listened to his words, and saw, as they had never seen before, the darkness, the light, the path,—the wrong, the right, and the remedy. “You must be either all slave or all free.” These were his prophetic words. Who was this man that came unheralded out of the West? Who was this man that rose above the great statesmen of his day—who was as earnest as Phillips, as gifted as Baker, who was more profound than Seward, more learned than Chase, more logical than Douglas, more eloquent than Everett? Who was he that combined in one soul the simplicity of a child, the wisdom of a sage, and the foresight of a prophet? Need I utter his sacred name? Wheresoever among men there is a love for disinterested patriotism and sublime attachment to duty, wheresoever liberty is worshiped and loyalty exalted, his name and deeds are known. His image is in all hearts, his name to-day is on all lips. That grand and lofty man was the rail-splitter of Illinois,—beloved, sainted, immortal Abraham Lincoln, statesman, philosopher, and patriot, the greatest, noblest, purest soul that ever was enwrapped in clay, to walk the earth,—Abraham Lincoln, the emancipator of a race; the savior of the Union!
Strangely enough, the election of the Presidency of this great and good and just man was the signal for revolt. “In your hands,” said he in his first inaugural address,—“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend’ it.”
But the blow was struck,—the blow that was ultimately to destroy slavery, and make our country free indeed,—“a land without a serf, a servant, or a slave.”
The war to preserve the integrity of the nation was marked by great battles, weary marches, long sieges, and splendid deeds of daring. Brave men met brave men, and gallant soldiers stormed forts and heights by gallant soldiers defended. If America wept for the folly and madness of some, yet was she proud of the courage of all her sons. We think to-night of the mighty struggle that ended with Appomattox’s cloudless day; of all the fields where saber flashed, and cannon roared, and patriot sons sealed their devotion with their blood. The world knows the result. Freedom triumphed. The Union was saved, Liberty survived, slavery perished and is dead upon our soil forevermore,—dead by the sword of immortal Grant, “dead by the hand of Abraham Lincoln, dead by the justice of Almighty God.”
Rejoice, O human hearts and human lips, that Liberty survived. Rejoice, O men of the North, that slavery is dead. Rejoice, O men of the South, that slavery is dead. Rejoice, O sons of the Republic, that the crown was restored to the brow of liberty, that, reunited and reconciled, loyal and true, we stand to-day, hand in hand, heart beating with heart, under the blessed and ever-triumphant banner of the Union.
And thus may we ever stand,—one people, one nation,—no North, no South, no East; no West,—one altar, one love, one hope.
And thus may we ever stand,—brothers in peace, brothers in war,—and “highly resolved that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.”
And thus may we ever stand,—a Union of hearts and of states, and “teach men that Liberty is not a mockery, and a republic is not another name for feebleness and anarchy.”
And standing thus, the world cannot prevail against us in war or in peace.
Fellow-citizens, in this hour of mourning we may without impropriety indulge ourselves in feelings of pride over the glorious deeds of our heroes dead and living. Pittsburgh Landing, Chattanooga, and Vicksburg; Lookout Mountain, Gettysburg, and Antietam; the Wilderness, Atlanta, and Richmond,—all are eternal witnesses to the deathless valor and sublime courage of those upon whose graves we have tenderly laid our flowers and upon whose brows we have lovingly placed the laurel wreath of victory and peace. No poor words of mine can tell them of our love or add unto their fame; the one is unspeakable, the other as broad and all-comprehensive as the earth, as high and spotless as the stars.
Upon the hearts of many heroes who made our country free—who with their blood washed away the ebon blot on our country’s shield—inexorable death has laid his hand, and the high and the low, the mighty general and the humble private, repose alike in the equal grave. All-conquering “time, the tomb-builder,” is day by day mustering out the noble army that went forth to save, to make and to preserve us a nation. Halleck, Thomas, Meade, McClellan, Hancock, McDowell, Garfield, Logan, Sheridan, Sherman, Harrison, Porter, McKinley,—all have been gathered to their fathers, gone to grasp the hands of their comrades on the peaceful shores of Eternal Rest.
But of him, the simple, silent, steadfast man; of him that marshaled order out of chaos, gave direction to mighty armies and led them to final victory; of him who made the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln a glorious reality, and eternal fact which broke the chains that held a race in bondage; of him who bore his great honors so modestly and meekly in war and peace; of him who by his genius added to our arms a luster as imperishable as his fame, and left his countrymen the priceless legacy of an untarnished and immortal name; of him who was ambitious, not as a Cæsar, not as a Napoleon, but as a Washington, with no higher aim, no loftier purpose, than to serve his country, not to wear a crown; of him who stood before uncovered kings and was saluted by the emperors of the earth, but never forgot his humble origin nor lost his sympathy for the poor and lowly; of him whose deeds, from duty and necessity, not from choice, were war, but whose heart ever yearned, whose voice ever pleaded, for peace,—what human tongue can speak of the spotless, peerless General Grant? His mighty work is done, his triumphal march is ended, his name is for all time. Reverently and tenderly we lay our flowers upon his tomb to-day; gratefully and lovingly we breathe his sacred name. Calm, cool, and undaunted, victorious in war, magnanimous in peace,—
Nothing can cover his high fame, but Heaven;
No pyramids set off his memories,
But tie eternal substance of his greatness;
To which I leave him.
But of the rank and file, of the unknown dead, what can be said? Sleep on, O humble soldier boy, sleep on! No more shall the midnight attack, the fierce charge, or the bugle-call to arms rouse thee from thy rest. Sleep on in thy lowly sepulcher, guarded by thy country’s tenderest love and pillowed on her grateful heart. Whether it be beneath polished marble and sculptured alabaster reared by the hands of affection, or beneath the green sod watered by tears of love; whether it be beneath rich, fragrant flowers blooming in perennial freshness and cared for by dear ones left behind, or in the lonely, pathless woods where in darkness and thick gloom you laid down your life; whether it be in fertile valley where your life blood reddened the grass of the meadow, or in the intrenchment of death, facing the pitiless storm of shot and shell; whether it be in the prison-pen, where your heart-throbs grew faint, but your undying love for the Stars and Stripes could not be seduced into deserting your country, or in sultry mountain-passes where you wearied of the march, and, fever-stricken, fell down to die,—wheresoever it be, on land or in ocean depth, O humble soldier boy, sleep on! Thy cause was liberty; thy purpose, Union; thy object, a nation purged and purified of slavery. Thy great deeds are thy eternal monument. Written on the nation’s heart and in the everlasting Book of Life thy name shall live forevermore, fadeless to eternity.
Oh, the victory, the victory
Belongs to thee!
God ever keeps the brightest crown for such as thou.
He gives it now to thee.
Oh, young and brave, and early and thrice blest!
Thrice, thrice, thrice blest!
Thy country turns once more to kiss thy youthful brow,
And takes thee gently, gently to her breast,
And whispers lovingly, ‘God bless thee—bless thee now,
My darling, thou shalt rest!’
My countrymen, one and all,—if enemies in the dark days of estrangement, brothers now and forever,—let us rejoice that under God we have a reunited country, that the Union was preserved, that Liberty, crowned and sceptered, sits enthroned in the constitution; and with our eyes fixed on the one and only banner of the loyal heart, let us reverently resolve to show ourselves in some measure worthy of our ancestors and our brethren who fought and died to make this blessed land the home of freedom, free lips and free hands, forever.
The dead soldiers of the republic, the heroes of the Revolution, the heroes of 1812, the heroes of 1848, the heroes of 1861, the heroes of 1898,—they sleep in glory. But what of the living? O soldiers of the republic, wheresoe’er you are to-night, on land or sea, in frigid north or torrid south, on frontier guarding the outposts of civilization, or in far Luzon defending with sleepless vigilance the flag of our hearts, God bless you and keep you. Be of good cheer. Your country believes in you and loves you. If you return, she will clasp you close to her heart and bestow on you the rewards of peace; if you fall fighting her battles, she will be mother to your children and treasure you as she treasures those who preserved the flag you have lifted and hold on high.
My countrymen, the heroes of every battlefield of the republic—from Bunker Hill to Santiago—look down to-night from their portals of eternal light and beseech us to be true to the principles in vindication of which they died. Nay, more: from every land made sacred by heroism, from every dungeon of agony and death where truth has suffered on the rack for conscience’ sake, from Marathon and Thermopylæ, from Runnymede and Bannockburn, from the graves of Kosciusko and Hampden, from the scaffolds of Sidney and Emmet, comes a voice beseeching us to be faithful to our mission, to guard jealously the citadel of Liberty, and to vindicate by our wisdom and righteousness and justice the holy cause of Freedom.
Oh! can we stand unmoved when thus addressed? Let us heed these warning voices and hearken to these solemn admonitions, and here and now, on this Memorial Day, with all the memories and lessons of the past fresh in our hearts, let us renew our devotion and reaffirm our allegiance to the cause of Liberty and Union, let us rededicate and reconsecrate ourselves to the service of our Country.
How shall we fittingly commemorate the honored dead? When Greece was threatened by the Persian army, Athens sent out a handful of her bravest sons to meet the myriad hosts of Darius. Oh! the intrepid courage, the sublime patriotism, of that Grecian band as they advanced across the plain of Marathon with leveled spears to fall upon the heathen horde that came to plunder and destroy. To commemorate the splendid victory of Miltiades over Darius, of enlightened civilization over brutish barbarism, the Athenians erected a mound on that historic plain, and as a special and the highest mark of honor buried their heroes where they had fallen. The light of Athens has gone out forever; her glory has departed, never to return; her power has vanished, never to be regained; the voice of her sublime philosophers and peerless orators is heard no more; the language of Homer and Demosthenes lives only in immortal type, the priceless heritage of the human race; the matchless art of Phidias and Praxiteles is of the past, and the unapproached masterpieces of the Parthenon have been eaten away by the gnawing tooth of irreverent time; a melancholy gloom of utter desolation and departed splendor broods over the “City of the Violet Crown,” the once first and proudest city in the world. But, after a lapse of more than twenty centuries,—centuries which have seen the death of the old and the birth of the new civilizations, the rise and fall of dynasties, the creation and decay of empires,—after a lapse of more than twenty centuries the earthen mound at Marathon still remains, clad to-day in the flowers of spring, an eternal witness to the valor and heroism of Athens, a solemn reminder that those who die in defense of Liberty and Country shall not perish from the memory of men.
Let the monument to our heroes be the land they saved, domed and canopied by the heavens that smiled upon their cause. For so long as the sun in his coming kisses and glorifies that blessed banner, or, sinking, burnishes our mountain tops with crimson gold; so long as yonder waves roll inward to break and die upon the shore; so long as the American heart beats to the transports of a true and lofty patriotism, or man has aspirations of light and liberty; so long as the nation lives; so long as the flag of Washington and Lincoln is in the sky,—even so long will our heroes’ fame survive and be an inspiration to the Union’s sons forever and forever.
SENATOR VEST’S EULOGY ON THE DOG
“Gentlemen of the Jury: The best friend a man has in this world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son and daughter that he has reared with loving care may become ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to us, those whom we trust with our happiness and our good name, may become traitors to their faith. The money that a man has he may lose. It flies away from him when he may need it most. Man’s reputation may be sacrificed in a moment of ill considered action. The people who are prone to fall on their knees and do us honor when success is with us may be the first to throw the stone of malice when failure settles its cloud upon our heads. The one absolutely unselfish friend a man may have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is the dog.
“Gentlemen of the Jury: A man’s dog stands by him in prosperity and poverty, in health and in sickness. He will sleep on the cold ground, when the wintry winds blow and the snow drives fiercely, if only he may be near his master’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encounter with the roughness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pauper master as if he were a prince.
“When all other friends desert, he remains. When riches take wings and reputation falls to pieces he is as constant in his love as the sun in its journey through the heavens. If fortune drives the master forth an outcast into the world, friendless and homeless, the faithful dog asks no higher privilege than that of accompanying him, to guard him against danger, to fight against his enemies, and when the last scene of all comes and death takes his master in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no matter if all other friends pursue their way, there by his graveside will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws and his eyes sad, but open in alert watchfulness, faithful and true even to death.”
CHAPTER XIV
PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR THE AFTER-DINNER SPEAKER
The practice of speaking at the banquet table is an ancient custom. In modern life it is the most universally used form of public speaking. Every educated man and woman sooner or later will be expected to take part in post-prandial occasions. This need not be an irksome task for any provided they consider carefully a few vital essentials, keeping in mind that the after-dinner speech is primarily to please. If it ever be to instruct, it is that kind of instruction which comes by the stimulation of our higher sensibilities.
Essentials:
1. Have something worth while to say.
2. This something must be appropriate to the occasion and to the guests.
3. Know who are to be present and who are to speak.
4. Know how much time is allotted you.
5. Strive your utmost to enjoy yourself and let what you say appear as a spontaneous outgrowth of your environment.
6. Avoid using old jokes and hackneyed quotations.
7. Avoid stiff formality. Radiate kindliness and good fellowship toward all.
8. Do not apologize. Let your appreciations and the fact that “some one else could have responded better,” that “you are unprepared,” etc., be taken for granted. Don’t waste time on these follies. Get down to business.
9. Have your speech carefully prepared and stick to it.
10. Remember that this is a time that reveals your true self, so let the best in you shine forth.
Let us discuss more fully some of the more important essentials. One should never begin his speech with an apology. How boresome it is to hear a speaker express surprise at being called upon; regretting he is totally unprepared; telling us that some one else could have spoken on this subject far better than he, etc., etc., etc. This is never in place and it is never necessary. On one occasion many prominent men and women were banqueting together in Chicago. Dr. George Vincent, then a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago, an orator himself of no mean ability, was toastmaster. A program of unusual length had been prepared. Under any ordinary chairman it would have kept the guests there until morning. Dr. Vincent arose, and in a clear, brief and terse introduction called attention to the long program. Then he said, addressing the speakers who sat at his table: “Each of you can give us the heart of your message in three, certainly not more than four minutes. I shall expect you, therefore, to go right to the heart of your subject. We will take it for granted that you are not prepared, that some one else could do better than you, and all the rest of the apologetic introductions. The moment your time is up I shall bring down the gavel as a forceful reminder that you must stop.”
The result was wonderful. Every speaker did as the chairman required. The audience heard a dozen or more bright, snappy addresses, full of thought and wit, with scarcely a redundant word. What otherwise would have been a long, tedious and wholly wearisome occasion was converted into a function of grace, a noble inspiration and a never-to-be-forgotten spiritual uplift.
Let the after-dinner speaker note that his speech should seem to grow naturally out of the environment and fit the occasion and the guests—that is, it should be appropriate. The manner of presenting it should be genial and kindly. This is no time or place to give vent to any personal animosity or didacticism. There is no disposition, Nature says, for a man with a well-filled stomach to digest heavy intellectual food. He would much rather be amused and entertained—that is, the occasion is a convivial one. Do not mistake this to mean triviality. Above all things, whatever you say or whatever you do, do not be frivolous. And finally that indispensable quality originality should distinguish both the matter and the manner of each speaker. This may mean nothing more than a new way of presenting an old subject.
The very fact that an after-dinner speech should be short, sparkling and fit the one who delivers it, makes it a difficult form of public address, and consequently necessitates very careful preparation. It is more than “to tell a joke, make a platitude and give a quotation.” While the after-dinner speech is supposed, primarily, to please, and certainly should do so, it is often made the means of conveying the most forceful lessons in business, religion, and patriotism. But when, in conveying these lessons, the speaker becomes prosy, or fails to please, he is out of place and should never have been invited.
CHAPTER XV
THE CULTIVATION OF THE MEMORY
Nothing is of greater importance to the intelligent and thoughtful man or woman who would become a public speaker than the cultivation of the memory. Its pleasures and joys are no less than its importance and usefulness. Well might Richter exclaim: “Recollection is the only paradise from which we cannot be turned out.” How it brings back to us joys of sights, sounds and emotions. One has been thrilled with a gorgeous landscape, a brilliant and vivid sunset, a majestic mountain, a vision of feminine beauty, or an inspiring exhibition of physical prowess. He has seen the proud march of armed men, or the gathering of gay and happy throngs in the public play-grounds and parks. A thousand memories of sights bring back joys and delights of other days. So is it with the memories of sounds—concerts, symphonies, stirring songs, martial music, and the sweet voices of loved ones passed away.
It can readily be seen that memory is the practical basis of all knowledge. Indeed there is no conscious knowledge without memory. No man can think without it; there is no business success; no writing, no poetry, no literature, no oratory, no conversation, no music, no art, no psychology, no anything of mental life without memory. Without memory there is no identity. If I cannot remember myself of an hour ago, of yesterday, of many yesterdays, I cannot be a personality. Life would be disconnected and therefore incoherent and useless.
A poor memory is ever a hindrance if not a positive curse. It is as if one’s legs should fail to bear him up when he starts to walk, run, leap, or as if his eyes should refuse to see, or saw but dimly when he wished to observe. It is a never-ending cause of confusion, embarrassment, irritation, and loss. No man in any walk of life ever yet succeeded without a good memory, and many a public speaker owes his success to his always ready power over this faculty. Abraham Lincoln is a striking example of this truth.
Stokes’s Golden Rule of Memory
Psychologists have not yet determined what the memory is, but all are agreed that it can be cultivated. A few general propositions can be laid down, which, if faithfully followed, are certain to bring desired results. Stokes, the great memory teacher of the Royal Polytechnic Institution of London, formulated his golden rule of memory as follows: “Observe, reflect, link thought with thought, and think of the impressions.”
Strengthening the Observation
Careful observation is the basis of memory. To observe is to regard with attention, to note with interest, in other words to see well. How many people are there who see well? All persons who are not blind can see, but do they see well? It must be confessed that good observers are rare, and that is one reason why good memories are rare. The discipline of the observation is one of the most important ends of all mental education. Teach a child to observe and he can and will educate himself. Indeed he cannot help becoming educated. Without discipline of the observation one may pass through ten colleges and yet remain uneducated. What is the reason the Indian can follow a trail so much better than a white man? His life has depended upon his powers of observation. From the earliest days of his dawning intelligence his perceptive faculties were aroused and highly developed by the struggle for his very existence. He was compelled to watch the animals in order that he might avoid those that were dangerous, and catch those that were good for food; to follow the flying birds that he might know when to trap them. He watched the fishes as they spawned and hatched; the insects as they bored and burrowed; the plants and trees as they grew and budded, blossomed and seeded. The tracks of animals, whether upon the sand, the snow, the mud, or more solid earth, soon became familiar signs to him. All these and many other things in nature he learned to know thoroughly in his simple and primitive manner. This knowledge in his daily struggle for existence came by means of his attention to details. Hence to the untrained white man his powers of observation seem little short of marvelous.
Children from their earliest years should be taught with systematic persistence to cultivate this faculty. They should be urged to tell all they can see in pictures. A table spread with diverse articles covered with a cloth is also a good means of disciplining close attention and memory. Let the children stand around it and, after removing the cloth, give them a minute, or less, for observation, then re-cover. Then give each child a chance to tell how many articles there are; what they are; and what is their relative position to each other, etc. An intelligent teacher will invent a score of devices for cultivation of the powers of observation, and nothing will better repay her endeavors.
Henry Ward Beecher used to illustrate the difference between observers and non-observers by telling a tale of two city lads whom he once sent out into the country. One he called “Eyes” and the other “No Eyes.” Each was to go to a certain place and report upon what he saw. The one on his return had seen little. The other—Eyes—was filled to overflowing with the things he had observed.
It is undoubtedly due to the development of this faculty that the hat-boys and hotel clerks are able to call the guests by name and return to them their own belongings.
Read the novels of Frank Norris, of Jack London, of Winston Churchill or any successful writer, the lines of any truly great poet, and the ordinary mind cannot fail to be impressed with the wonderful store of knowledge gleaned from a thousand and one sources possessed by their writers. Think of the wealth of observations poured forth by a Shakspere, a Browning, a Goethe. Every page contains them by the score—observations of facts in nature, art, science, literature, human action, and indeed of everything under the sun. Hence, if you would be an educated man you must observe.
Suggestive Methods to Pursue
To discipline the power of observation, begin consciously to see and then immediately to test your own remembrance of what you see. See slowly, see surely. Be sure you have seen correctly. There is so much uncertainty in all of our mental processes. If it is a pile of books you are seeing, be sure, positive, that there are eleven. Do not content yourself by saying there are about ten or twelve and let it go at that. Note their size, color of their bindings, and, if possible, note each title.
There are some librarians who seldom forget a book after once seeing it, and can tell not only its appearance, but its place on the book shelves, and the appearance of its neighbors on either side. This is one of the qualifications of an efficient library assistant. What is true of the librarian is likewise true of other people. What makes the difference between an efficient clerk in a book-store and one who is merely passable? It is this power of observation and memory which makes his knowledge of books held in stock reliable.
Let us continue our suggestions. In looking over a landscape be definite in your seeing. Be sure that the river is to the left, and not to the right; that a certain tree is a sycamore, and not a poplar; that the green on the hillside is the young, fresh green of the dawn of the spring, rather than the richer green of the summer. What is it that makes the landscape artist? His power to portray depends upon his ability to discern and observe. The poet and orator do the same, but they make their pictures with words and phrases instead of pigments and canvas.
In seeing anything, get hold of every fact possible—size, position, color, relative importance, and, then, before you conclude your observations, close your eyes and reconstruct the scene mentally. Do this over and over again, until you add and add to your mental picture things you had before failed to see. Do not merely catalogue mentally, but see everything in its own place, in full detail, and in its relation to every other thing. A comparatively short period of this kind of discipline will enable you to do things that will not only astound your friends, but will be a source of infinite pleasure and, if used intelligently in your business or profession, profit to yourself.
The same principle applies in reading. Read slowly. Be sure you understand. Grasp every idea thoroughly. To do this you must learn to picture mentally. You should compel yourself to make a mental picture of every scene described. You are reading Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” You come to his incomparable description of the battle of Waterloo. He tells us at the very commencement that it was the rain that gained the victory at Waterloo. Observation and reflection on Hugo’s part made it possible for him to make this declaration. Carefully observe this statement and what follows.
Picture that great plain, the undulating sweep of ground. Place the two armies, and then see the attack begin on Hougomont. Watch the changing scene with your mental eyes. Follow Hugo as he describes the general confusion from noon until four o’clock in the afternoon. Now prepare yourself for a great picture of a tremendous day. See Wellington’s disposal of his troops on the farther side of a long hill, on the crest of which was a deep trench caused by a road whose ruts during the centuries had worn down into the earth ten, twenty or more feet. On the near side of this hill Napoleon’s cavalry are ascending—three thousand five hundred of them, colossal men on colossal horses. On, up, they sweep. They seem as irresistible as the passing cyclone. Just as they reach the crest, to their horror they discover this trench between themselves and the English. Let Hugo’s own words now complete the picture for you:
It was a terrible moment. The ravine was there, unexpected, yawning, directly under the horses’ feet, two fathoms deep between its double slopes; the second file pushed the first into it, and the third pushed on the second; the horses reared and fell backward, landed on their haunches, slid down, all four feet in the air, crushing and overwhelming the riders; and there being no means of retreat,—the whole column being no longer anything more than a projectile,—the force which had been acquired to crush the English crushed the French; the inexorable ravine could only yield when filled; horses and riders rolled pell-mell, grinding each other, forming but one mass of flesh in this gulf: when this trench was full of living men, the rest marched over them and passed on. Almost a third of Dubois’s brigade fell into that abyss.
Take an illustration from the American novel—“Ramona.” Get a real picture in your mind of the appearance of the country. See the sheep with their lambs in the fields under the trees. Determine what size, shape, and color these trees are. Picture Juan Can, the foreman or major-domo, listen to his voice, so that you can definitely sense what kind of impression it makes upon your mental ear. Do the same with the Señora Moreno. Can you see that mustard-field described by the author, where Ramona goes out to meet the good Father Salvierderra? Have you got a picture in your mind of Ramona, and the father, and how they met, and how they returned to Camulos together? Picture, picture, picture, mentally, until every scene, every landscape, every character is vividly before you.
This was the method followed by Macaulay, whose memory was so phenomenal that Sydney Smith called him “an encyclopedia in breeches,” and who used to say that he owed much of his memory power to the discipline he used to give himself in mental picturing. He never read in a hurry. He always allowed himself time enough vividly to bring the scene before his mental vision, and once done, with him, it was ready to be recalled at any time.
Joaquin Miller used to say that he even pictured abstract ideas. If, for instance, he was thinking of the abstract quality of coldness, he would make a picture of some one suffering from cold, or some wintry landscape.
It Is Difficult to Observe Properly
By this time, if you have faithfully followed these instructions about observation, you will have discovered that the mere observation of unrelated facts amounts to very little. You will begin to see that no observation of the mind is simple. While you are observing, you are naturally doing something else, for you are classifying facts, seeing their relation one to another, recognizing similarities or differences, contrasts and harmonies. The mind works as a whole, not the memory separately, nor the judgment by itself. Each part is dependent upon each other part: they overlap one another; the operations of one faculty imply the operations of all the other faculties. It is for this reason that the student must seek to discipline each apparently isolated faculty of the mind.
In observing, it is not enough mentally to picture what you read. You must go even more into detail than that. You must observe words. Did you ever read “Martin Eden,” that wonderful study in mental development and self-analysis, written by Jack London, revealing in retrospect his own mental processes? It will more than pay you for the trouble of reading. Follow and practice what he therein describes. Words are things, but they are things only when you know them so intimately that they bring real concept to your mind the moment you see them. It is not enough that you can pronounce a word properly—that you seem to know it. Each word must mean something to you, and that something must be definite, so definite that no other can mean exactly the same thing.
One of the greatest dialectitians of our day was Monsignore Capel, the private confessor of Pope Leo XIII. Even in extemporaneous speech every word he used was the right word. No other word would have done just as well. He was once asked how he gained his power over words, and he replied to the effect that when he was a lad he had several tutors. One only, however, was a real and thorough teacher. He said: “My first day with him I shall never forget. He gave me a lesson in Cæsar, and then sent me away with six lines, which I was to translate and bring to him in the afternoon. That seemed easy. When I went to recite my lesson I followed my usual wont—gave a free and easy translation, which may have contained the sense of the original, or may not. He heard me through without a word. Then he began a dissection of my method of translation that made my hair stand on end, every drop of my blood tingle, every faculty of my brain respond, every power of my soul awaken to a sense of the hitherto untold, undreamed of, unbounded capacities of words. That man was a genius in quickening a lad’s dormant faculties into living, driving, whipping forces for good. He took each word of the original and demanded that I find its equivalent in English, and he showed me how to do it. I must never take to him an English word whose original parentage I could not trace. I must know all its mutations and their whys and wherefores. There could be no such thing as a free translation. It was either a strictly literal translation or my version, lazy or otherwise, in another language from that in which the author had written. From that day on, I began the study of words. I learned how to trace the history of words; the changes that had come into their meanings, and my teacher helped me to do it during the whole of the time I was in his hands. To him I owe whatever power I possess to-day.”
Read Trench’s book on words and then study John Ruskin’s “Sesame and Lilies.” Get hold of all the modern books on the subject. Read Shelley, Keats, George Sterling, Browning, Swinburne—any author who has great felicity of phrase, rare delicacy of expression, and seek to discover his secret, and you will be amazed at the potent force of words. For, of course, while words themselves are to be studied, it is in their relation one to another when put into sentences that their power, sweetness, beauty, charm, and music lie.
And here we come to the real work of observing. All else is preparatory to grasping the idea of the author. In his idea lies his inspiration. The words he uses may be good, medium, or indifferent, but if we grasp his idea, his high, intellectual and spiritual conception and aspirations, we have gained the chief thing. Words are a wonderful help in this. His power to arrange them, to give them new settings, new and richer cadences, will not fail to quicken our own intellect to readier and keener appreciation of his thought. Hence words should be deeply, attentively and earnestly studied by all authors and speakers in order that they may be able to arrange them in this masterly fashion. For this personal arrangement of words and phrases, this flow and rhythm, is that marvelous thing we call style. Several times in “Martin Eden” Jack London refers to this. He has his rude hero who is brought out of the streets, influenced by the love he feels for the heroine, determine to educate himself. He studies and begins to write.
He read to her a story [one of his own compositions], one that he flattered himself was among his very best. He called it “The Wine of Life,” and the wine of it, that had stolen into his brain when he wrote it, stole into his brain now as he read it. There was a certain magic in the original conception, and he adorned it with more magic and phrase and touch. All the old fire was reborn in him and he was swayed and swept away so that he was blind and deaf to the faults of it. But it was not so with Ruth. Her trained ear detected the weaknesses and exaggerations, the overemphasis of the tyro, and she was instantly aware each time the sentence-rhythm tripped and faltered. She scarcely noted the rhythm otherwise, except when it became too pompous, at which moments she was disagreeably impressed with its amateurishness.
Just before this he said to her: “I hope I am learning to talk, there seems to be so much in me I want to say. But it is all so big. I can’t find ways to say what is really in me. Sometimes it seems to me that all the world, all life, everything, had taken up residence inside of me and was clamoring for me to be spokesman. I feel—oh, I can’t describe it—I feel the bigness of it, but when I speak, I babble like a child. It is a great task to transmute feeling and sensation into speech, written or spoken, that will, in turn, in him who reads or listens, transmute itself back into the selfsame feeling and sensation. It is a lordly task. See, I bury my face in the grass, and the breath I draw in through my nostrils sets me quivering with a thousand thoughts and fancies. It is a breath of the Universe I have breathed. I know song and laughter, and success and pain, and struggle and death; and see visions that arise in my brain somehow out of the scent of the grass, and I would like to tell them to you, to the world. But how can I? My tongue is tied. I have tried, by the spoken word, just now, to describe to you the effect on me of the scent of the grass. But I have not succeeded. I have no more than hinted in awkward speech. My words seem gibberish to me, and yet I am stifled with desire to tell.”
That was her final judgment on the story as a whole—amateurish, though she did not tell him so. Instead, when he had done, she pointed out the minor flaws and said that she liked the story.
But he was disappointed. Her criticism was just. He acknowledged that, but he had a feeling that he was not sharing his work with her for the purpose of schoolroom correction. The details did not matter. They could take care of themselves. He could mend them, he could learn to mend them. Out of life he had captured something big and attempted to imprison it in the story. It was the big thing out of life that he had read to her, not sentence structure and semicolons. He wanted her to feel with him this big thing that was his, that he had seen with his own eyes, grappled with his own brain, and placed there on the pages with his own hands in printed words. Well, he had failed, was his secret decision. Perhaps the editors were right. He had felt the big thing, but he had failed to transmute it. He concealed his disappointment, and joined so easily with her in her criticism that she did not realize that deep down in him was running a strong undercurrent of disagreement.
Later he enlarges upon this, and also relates how he gained his mastery:
On the looking-glass were lists of definitions and pronunciations; when shaving, or dressing, or combing his hair, he conned these lists over. Similar lists were on the wall over the oil-stove, and they were similarly conned while he was engaged in cooking or washing dishes. New lists continually displaced the old ones. Every strange or partly familiar word encountered in his reading was immediately jotted down, and later, when a sufficient number had been accumulated, were typed and pinned to the wall or looking-glass. He even carried them in his pockets, and reviewed them at odd moments on the street, or while waiting in butcher-shop or grocery to be served.
He went farther in the matter. Reading the works of men who had arrived, he noted every result achieved by them, and worked out the tricks by which they had been achieved—the tricks of narrative, of exposition, of style, the points of view, the contrasts, the epigrams; and of all these he made lists for study. He did not ape. He sought principles. He drew up lists of effective and fetching mannerisms, till out of many such, culled from many writers, he was able to induce the general principle of mannerism, and, thus equipped, to cast about for new and original ones of his own, and to weigh and measure and appraise them properly. In similar manner he collected lists of strong phrases, the phrases of living languages, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame, or that glowed and were mellow and luscious in the midst of the arid desert of common speech. He sought always for the principle that lay behind and beneath. He wanted to know how the thing was done; after that he could do it for himself. He was not content with the fair face of the beauty. He dissected beauty in his crowded little bedroom laboratory, where cooking smells alternated with the outer bedlam of the Silva tribe; and, having dissected and learned the anatomy of beauty, he was nearer being able to create beauty itself.
This latter quotation shows us how Jack London mastered a knowledge of that subtle thing called “style.” Every student of English literature knows there are vast differences between the writings of Johnson and Carlyle, DeQuincey and Coleridge, Ruskin and Newman, Browning and Tennyson. Yet each uses the English language and possibly it might be found that the vocabulary of each was not very different from that of the other. Then wherein lies the difference? It is in that marvelous personal quality, that individuality expressed in its use of words, that we call style, that the difference lies.
To aid your memory, study and observe styles. Ever be on the alert to discover why an author appeals to you. In reading Bret Harte ask yourself why his appeal is so different from that of Sir Walter Scott, Browning from Longfellow, Whitman from Swinburne, Pope from Sterling.
Observation also applies to hearing as well as seeing. How do you hear? Carefully, definitely, specifically, or indifferently, generally? Have you ever sought to disentangle the roar of noises you can hear in the city’s streets? At first it is a dull confusion of sound that comes as one great, indistinguishable roar. Listen! Observe, and you will soon be able to distinguish the clatter of hoofs from the creak of the car-wheels; the whistle of the traffic-officer from the cry of the newsboy, or the honking of automobile-horns from the clang of street-car gongs.
Most people think that only a highly trained musician should be able to distinguish the various instruments as they are played in a band or an orchestra, but any well-trained observer should be able to differentiate between the instruments if he so desires. And this brings us to a very striking discovery that we should not overlook; namely, that the powers of observation should be under the personal control of the individual. For instance, if he desires to observe the effect of the music of an orchestra of a hundred pieces as a whole, he should be able to do so. He should likewise be able to hear the different instruments, either alone, or in their relation one to another. The power to do this is one of the qualifications of a great conductor. His faculties of observation are highly developed, or are naturally acute in this regard; hence, when combined with other leadership qualities, he becomes a great director.
As applied to hearing a speech, lecture, or sermon, how shall one observe? Exactly the same as one observes in reading—by concentration of attention, seeing details, visualizing or mentally picturing every scene; listening to the speaker’s choice of words; his power to make euphonic grouping not only for the sweetness of sound, but for their potency as well.
Hard work, this observing, is it not? It is intensive and perpetual. The athlete must keep in training so long as he desires physically to excel; so with the student or scholar. He must not lag, must not cease in his efforts, or he will lose his place or power. The will must be evoked to aid in such concentration of effort. The desire must be more fully excited, aroused, enthused, or the will will not respond. How many people go to church, to hear a lecture, an address, with the determination strong within them to allow nothing to interfere with their observing to the full what is said by the speaker? Note the turning around as late-comers take their places. Watch how easily the major part of an audience’s attention can be diverted. It is pitiable and even ludicrous were it not so lamentable, because it reveals that in the training of our youth strict attention has not been demanded.
Develop the Power of Reflection
We now come to the second part of Professor Stokes’s rule—Reflect. This word is made up of two Latin words re, back or again, and flecto, to bend or turn. The meaning is thus made clear. By observation through one or more of our senses we perceive things; mental impressions are secured; these are now to be bent or turned so that we can see them again, but the process is to be purely mental. Reflection in itself implies recognition or memory, for without memory there could be nothing upon which to reflect. Every normal human being has the power to bend again, to turn back, and over and over again the impressions he has received through observation. Hence reflect continuously upon that which you wish to remember. Go over it in every possible way. Dwell upon it, let it develop within you until you are as familiar with every possible phase, detail, change, enlargement in it, as a fond mother is with the face of her precious baby. As you reflect, be sure your mind is not playing you false. Refresh it by referring to the original again and again if possible. In this way you deepen the original impressions, make them more lasting, more secure. Then, too, as you look upon a subject again—reflect upon it—you get new angles of vision. This enlarges your conception and provokes original thought. For instance: Newton observed an apple fall. There we have a simple fact of observation. He began to reflect upon this fact. As he did so, fresh thought upon the fact leaped into his mind and in due time the theory of gravitation was born.
Centuries ago men observed the fact that when a string of any kind was pulled tight and struck upon it gave forth a musical sound. In due time a man or many men in succession reflected upon this fact, and the guitar, the banjo, the ukulele, the violin and the piano were invented, born of the processes of observation and reflection. This is everywhere seen in fields where the inventive genius of man is at play. It was John Dolland who observed that glass made of different kinds, or different properties of sand and silica, etc., had a different color, and produced a different effect when used in a sidereal telescope. He reflected upon this fact. This led him to experiment, and by and by he discovered that when he placed lenses together, one concave and the other convex, and one of crown and the other of flint glass, a telescope was made that eliminated the extra and confusing images of the object gazed upon, hitherto found on the outer rim of all telescopes. In other words, the achromatic telescope was born—one of the greatest helps to astronomical science—born of many careful observations and long-continued reflections.
Another case in point is that of Franklin, who saw the lightning in the clouds—a simple act of observation. He began to reflect upon his observation. His reflections suggested something. He sent up a kite to find out if there was any possibility of tapping that inexhaustible reservoir of electricity in the heavens. Our use to-day of the telegraph, telephone, wireless, electric light, electric power in the thousand and one ways it is made to do service to mankind is the result of those acts of observation and reflection. The same is true with Luther Burbank, who looked more closely, more attentively, with greater concentration, upon flowers, vegetables, plants, trees, than most men, observed that extra fine potatoes resulted when the flowers of the largest and best potatoes were cross-pollinated. He reflected upon this fact. The results have astounded the world in the development of improved and even new varieties of useful and beautiful growths. Also Darwin’s observations, confirmed by those of thousands of others, duly reflected upon, enabled him to write his “Origin of Species”; and when Herbert Spencer read (observed) that book and reflected upon it, and others cognate with it, he formulated his “Synthetic Philosophy,” which absolutely changed the current of the thought of the world.
So it is with all sciences, all theories, all working hypotheses, all steps toward complete knowledge. They, each and all, invariably and unalterably depend upon the two powers of observation and reflection. There are no discoveries, no inventions, without these two mental operations. Hence is it not apparent that no memory student can over-estimate their importance? For, here is a fact that observation has revealed and reflection and experience confirmed; namely, that he who has carefully observed the most facts is the best prepared to reflect profitably. Or to put it in still another way; no one can properly, completely and successfully reflect unless his mind is stored with many facts accurately and minutely observed. How could Carlyle have written his wonderful “Heroes and Hero Worship” unless he had carefully observed, through his reading, the effect of a great man’s actions upon millions of his fellowmen? His “Cromwell” and “French Revolution” still more fully reflect the wealth of his stored facts (observations) and the result of his constantly turning them over again and again (reflection) in his powerful, logical and imaginative mind. Helen Hunt Jackson’s “Ramona” is a similar result of powerful observation of the California Indians and sympathetic and clear-headed reflection, as was also Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Hence, Observe, Reflect, with greater and increasingly greater care.
Thought-Linking
We now come to Stokes’s third requirement—“Link thought with thought.” Few things are seen isolated from other things. Indeed, unless one deliberately shuts out—inhibits—his observing faculties, it is impossible for him to see one thing alone. Even the solitary star is seen in relation to the sky, and the solitary vessel, as it moves, in relation to the ever-changing surface of the deep. And it is this natural relationship of one idea to another—and its conscious recognition at the time of observation, or later, during reflection, that one’s memory is aided. This is what psychologists have always called “the law of the association of ideas.” It is a natural law, which even a child unconsciously recognizes. The baby subconsciously or instinctively knows that food and its pleasant sensations of comfort are associated with its mother’s breast. Star and sky, sea and ship, automobile and swift travel, gun and war, cyclone and disaster, are instances of natural and simple association that all people recognize.
In the cultivation, discipline, strengthening of the powers of the memory, this natural law can be made to render marvelous service. For not only can man avail himself of faculties of the mind unconsciously exercised, he has the additional power of consciously directing their exercise. Just as our domestic water systems are the result of the conscious direction of the self-flowing water in the course we wish it to flow, so is the enlarged power of our memories the result of the conscious and purposeful direction of our observation, reflection, and thought-linking to that end. Drawn from personal experience there are five methods of thought-linking which have proved themselves of great help. These are: First, Incidental. Second, Accidental. Third, Scientific. Fourth, Pictorial. Fifth, Constructive.
The Incidental Method
The events, the incidents, of the day occur in a natural order: one follows another. The days of the week with their respective incidents follow in natural sequence. A full recognition of this fact is of far greater help to the memory than one would believe on first thought. Many a man has been able to recall a particularly important event by going back, step by step, incident by incident, over the occurrences of the day. It is related of Thurlow Weed, the eminent statesman, that, when he entered political life, he had so poor and wretched a memory that it was his bane. He determined to improve it, and, realizing the importance of observation and reflection, he decided upon the following method: As the incidents of the day followed each other, in natural sequence, he would consciously note how they followed. Then at the close of the day he sat down with his wife, and relating the incidents exactly in the order they occurred, he would review the events of the day, even to the most trivial and inconsequential act. At other times he would relate the incidental order backwards. It was not long before his memory so improved that he began to be noted for it. Before he died, he had the reputation of possessing a phenomenal memory. One will find this same method a great help in seeking to recall a sermon, a lecture or speech. There is a natural sequence in all well-thought-out addresses, and the listener, carefully noting the change from one thought to another—the progress of the address—will find it aid his memory development wonderfully to take the last thought given, say, and in reverse order, bring up the thoughts, the ideas given. Then let the address be “incidentally” gone over from the first thought to the second, the third, and so on to the end. Thus it can be recalled and put away in the memory securely for future use.
The Accidental Method
Another natural method is what may be termed accidental. It is purely accidental that Pike’s Peak is 14,147 feet high, but see how this fact enables you to fix the figures in your mind. There are two fourteens and the last figure is half of fourteen, namely, seven. It is a purely accidental fact that the two Emperors of Germany died in 1888, but the fact that they did die in that year, the one year in the whole century when the three eights occur, indelibly fixes the date in mind. Again the year 1666 might have passed by unnoticed were it not for the fact that that was the date of the Great Fire in London.
Now let us see how this accidental association may fix a relative date for many other important events. The Great Fire purged the city of London of the horrors caused by the Great Plague. This plague was made the basis for Eugene Sue’s graphic novel, “The Wandering Jew.” Wherever he went—so ran the legend—the plague followed as the result of Christ’s curse. It was the Great Plague that brought into existence the peculiar custom of all the Latin, as well as the English, peoples exclaiming, “God bless you!” or its equivalent, upon hearing one sneeze. The reason for the custom is that sneezing was one of the first symptoms of the fearful plague, and one, hearing his friend sneeze, immediately felt afraid he was seized with the dread disease, and gave vent to this pious exclamation. The custom persists to this day, but few know its origin. This plague also brings to mind a noble example of heroism that is worthy of enshrinement in every heart. It was found by those who watched the progress of the plague that it went from place to place, dying out here as soon as it appeared elsewhere. It was this phenomenon that gave to Eugene Sue the dramatic element in his novel, for it appeared to the ignorant people of those days that the plague actually followed the cursed Jew. A country pastor, an humble but devoted and true servant of God, in a little Derbyshire village, had observed this fact. Although isolation for contagious diseases was not thought of by physicians at that time, this man seemed to grasp the idea. He determined that if ever the disease reached his village he would endeavor to isolate his people from all others so that it would stop there and no longer continue to slay its helpless victims. In due time the plague did appear in his village. He had already aroused in his simple-minded flock the spirit of true heroism, and they pledged themselves to second his endeavors. Food was brought from a near-by town and deposited near a watering-trough, in which a small stream was continually flowing. In this flowing water the villagers placed the money in payment for their food supplies. Thus there was no contact of peoples, no contamination. The villagers kept to themselves, no one going away and no one coming in. The result was that in a very short time the plague was stayed, and Europe breathed a great sigh of relief, attributing its cessation to the goodness of God, when we now know it was owing to the self-sacrificing wisdom of men.
But we are not yet through with our associations with the accidental date of 1666. The most remarkable account we have of the Great Plague is Daniel DeFoe’s “Journal of the Plague,” which for many years was regarded as the genuine diary of an eye-witness. As DeFoe, however, was not born until 1661, five years before the plague, he could have had but the faintest and most childish remembrances of that dread event. But it was he who wrote the world-famous, ever-enjoyable “Robinson Crusoe.” This appeared in 1719, and, while the association of this date with that of 1666 is remote, it does approximately fix the date of the appearance of that masterpiece.
Another literary masterpiece appeared, however, much nearer the time of the plague. That was John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” which was written in Bedford Jail during the actual year of the plague and fire.
One of the greatest lawyers of England was Sir Matthew Hale, and it is a help to fix approximately the time he was on the bench when we recall that it was he who sentenced John Bunyan to the twelve years’ confinement that gave to the world his “Pilgrim’s Progress.” On the other hand, Hale was a great personal friend of Richard Baxter, who, at about the same time, wrote the well known “Saints’ Everlasting Rest.” Here, then, hung on to this accidental peg of the year 1666, we find the following facts: First, the Great Fire; second, the Great Plague; third, Eugene Sue’s novel “The Wandering Jew;” fourth, the custom of saying “God bless you;” fifth, the heroism of the Derbyshire villagers that stopped the plague; sixth DeFoe’s writing of the “Journal of the Plague” and “Robinson Crusoe;” seventh, Bunyan’s writing of “Pilgrim’s Progress;” eighth, Sir Matthew Hale on the English bench; ninth, Richard Baxter’s writing of the “Saints’ Everlasting Rest.”
Every novelist uses this law of accidental association, for it is habitually used by every class of people. Who is there who does not recall certain events because they happened on days when other and perhaps more important events occurred which fixed the date in the mind? For instance, if an event occurred on the day of her first child’s birth, and the mother was aware of it, you may rest fully assured she would have no trouble recalling the date of the event. Its accidental association will guarantee its remembrance.
Lawyers use this law constantly in seeking to extract evidences from their witnesses. The dates of certain events are surely fixed in the mind. Other events, less securely remembered, occurred at, or about, the same time. The association once clearly established, the memory invariably responds.
The Scientific Method
This method is merely a phase of reflection, for during that process one naturally classifies his ideas, received through observation. As David Pryde says in his “How to Read”:
See every fact and group of facts as clearly and distinctly as you can; ascertain the fact in your past experience to which it bears a likeness or relation, and then associate it with that fact. And this rule can be applied in almost every case. Take as an example that most difficult of all efforts, namely, the beginning of a new study, where all the details are strange. All that you have to do is to begin with those details that can be associated with your past experience. In science, begin with the specimens with which you are already familiar, and group around them as many other specimens as you can. In history and geography, commence with the facts relating to the places and scenes which you actually know. And in foreign languages, start with the words and phrases for the most familiar objects and incidents of every-day life. In this way you will give all your mind a clear and safe foundation in your own experience.... The mind cannot master many disconnected details. It becomes perplexed and then helpless. It must generalize these details. It must arrange them into groups, according to the three laws of association—resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect. This, it will be granted at once, must be the method in all rigidly systematic studies, such as the sciences, history, biography, and politics. But it is valuable to ordinary people as well to know that the same plan can be used in all kinds of descriptions. Every collection of details can be arranged in groups in such a way that they can be clearly understood and remembered. The following is the manner in which this can be done: In studying any interesting scene, let your mind look carefully at all the details. You will then become conscious of one or more definite effects or strong impressions that have been made upon you. Discover what these impressions are. Then group and describe in order the details which tend to produce each of the impressions. You will then find that you have comprised in your description all the important details of the scene. As an instance, let us suppose a writer is out in the country on a morning toward the end of May, and wishes to describe the multitudinous objects which delight his senses. First of all, he ascertains that the general impressions as produced on his mind by the summer landscape are the ideas of luxuriance, brightness and joy. He then proceeds to describe in these groups the details which produce these impressions. He first takes up the luxuriant features, the springing crops of grain completely hiding the red soil; the rich, living carpet of grass and flowers covering the meadows; the hedge-rows on each side of the way, in their bright summer green; the trees bending gracefully under the full weight of their foliage; and the wild plants, those waifs of nature, flourishing everywhere, smothering the woodland brook, filling up each scar and crevice in the rock, and making a rich fringe along the side of every highway and footpath. He then descants upon the brightness of the landscape; the golden sunshine; the pearly dew-drops hanging on the tips of every blade of grass, and sparkling in the morning rays; the clusters of daisies dappling the pasture-land; the dandelion glowing under the very foot of the traveler; the chestnut trees, like great candelabra, stuck all over with white lights, lighting up the woodlands; and lilacs, laburnums, and hawthorne in full flower, making the farmer’s garden one mass of variegated blossom. And last of all, he can dwell upon the joy that is abroad on the face of the earth: the little birds so full of one feeling that they can only trill it forth in the same delicious monotone; the lark bounding into the air, as if eager and quivering to proclaim his joy to the whole world; the bee humming his satisfaction as he revels among the flowers; and the myriads of insects floating in the air and poising and darting with drowsy buzz through the floods of golden sunshine. Thus we see that, by this habit of generalizing, the mind can grasp the details of almost any scene.
This desire to unify knowledge, to see unity in variety, is one of the most noted characteristics of great men in all departures of learning. Scientific men in the present day are eager to resolve all the phenomena of nature into force or energy. The history of philosophy, too, is in a great measure, taken up with attempts to prove that being and knowing are identical. Emerson can find no better definition of genius than that it is intellect constructive. Perhaps, he says, if we should meet Shakspere, we should not be conscious of any great inferiority, but of a great equality, only that he possesses a great skill of using—of classifying—his facts, which we lacked.
Herbert Spencer was a master at the classification of facts. By the classification of all the known languages of the world, the scientists are seeking to find out accurately, as never before, the relationships of mankind. Men have been writing the different languages of widely diverse people for centuries, but never before has an attempt been made on so vast a scale to bring all this isolated knowledge to bear upon the solution of one great question—the origin of the human race. All scientific knowledge is based upon the association of isolated and detached facts. These are then reflected upon, and, finally, theories begin to form themselves in the mind of the student, the philosopher. He then brings his facts and theories into close relationship and sees whether they “fit.” If he is assured that they do, he presents his thought to the world, and, according to its reasonableness, it is received or rejected.
The Pictorial Method
Most children make mental pictures with great ease, but, unfortunately, as they grow older, they allow this faculty to lose its power by disuse. In the cultivation and use of the memory, however, it can be of the greatest possible help. All books of travel and description, all novels, all history, are made up of a series of word pictures. Do not be content merely to read the words of these pictures. Go further! Actually picture each scene in your imagination and you will thus materially aid your original power of observation. Let your pictures be definite, positive, explicit as to details, for the more careful you are in making a picture real to your mind, the easier it will be recalled.
Now, if you desire to recall the whole course of a book, you will find these vividly-made mental pictures have a natural order of sequence, and one will recall the next following, and so on. There is great joy in learning to make pictorial thought-links, and then in the ability they give to the memory to recall them.
Methods of Constructive Thought-Linking
We now come to the active making of artificial links as aids to the memory where none naturally appear. A thought-link of this type is the generally known doggerel:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November,
All the rest have thirty-one
Save February which alone
[18]Has twenty-eight, and one day more
We add to it one year in four.
In like manner how do we remember the order of the prime colors? Few there are who do not know the coined word, made from the initial letters of Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red—Vibgyor. Again, the student of geology, who forgets the order of his great epochs or eras, might recall them by formulating a sentence that presents the initial letters of the names of these epochs. Thus, “Careful men pay easily,” suggests Cenozoic, Mesozoic, Paleozoic, Eozoic. Of course no one of common sense presumes to assert that these constructive thought-links are any other than crutches, footbridges over streams too wide to stride or jump unaided. They should frankly be recognized as such, and only reverted to in case of necessity, or as a last resort. But it is equally foolish in view of the testimony of their almost universal usage and helpfulness, to deny that they are an aid to most memories.
Think of the Impressions
To “think of the impressions.” This is the final admonition of Stokes’s golden rule of memory. One word conveys his idea—review. The things to be remembered must be thought over. They must be re-collected—again collected. You will thus re-observe them, re-reflect upon them, re-strengthen your original mental impressions and the ideas that have grown around them. Experience demonstrates that all memory impressions are lasting. One may have forgotten something for twenty, thirty, forty years, when suddenly a chance word, sound, sight, or even odor, will recall it with an intensity and reality that are startling. All works on mental philosophy give illustrations of this asserted fact. The practical need of all men, however, is to cultivate the ability to call up mental impressions at will.
Ready recollection is the great desideratum. Hidden knowledge is of slight use. It is as if one had a fortune stored away in some hidden dungeon, carefully locked up, but he had lost the key. Availability, readiness, promptness are essentials to efficiency. The hat-boy at the hotel dining-room would be useless did his memory not act promptly, instantly. To-morrow will not do. Now is the accepted time.
This efficient, prompt, responsive memory is the one you need and desire. It is worth striving for. The prospector wanders over the mountains, canyons, deserts, for years, seeking the precious ore in most unlikely places. He is always buoyed up with the hope, some day, of striking it rich. Are you as earnest in your desire for memory development as he? If so, careful, systematic, daily exercise of the various faculties of the mind and memory will give to you this golden possession. Reread here what has been quoted earlier from David Pryde’s “What Books to Read and How to Read.” The hints therein contained are worth their weight in gold to the really earnest student. But rest assured of this: If you would have a good memory, you must work for it. Give your whole attention to whatever you read or hear. Concentrate. Compare the parts of the composition with the whole. Seek its excellencies, study its deficiencies. Reflect upon it from every angle. Write out in your own language the facts, or the ideas of what you have heard or read. Then use daily what you have gained. Knowledge stored away in the mind is not only useless, it is positively injurious. Use is the law of life. Give your knowledge, your ideas, your reflections away. Tell them to your intimates, your friends. Write them to your correspondents. For the more you give the more you will find you have. There is a giving that increases and a withholding that impoverishes, and in nothing is this more apparent than in the giving of the riches of the mind or memory. Each time one recites a well-liked poem for the benefit and blessing of others, the more firmly he fixes it in his own mind. “There is that which scattereth, and yet increaseth.” In the scattering of your gems of mind and heart, you are increasing your own store.
Not only give freely, but give often. The daily use of what you have gained is an advantage. Avail yourself of every reasonable opportunity to use your newly acquired powers, and your newly acquired knowledge. Let me repeat, use is the law of life. To learn something new daily is a good motto, but to use what you have learned is even better. You gain ease of recollection by daily exercising the faculty of recollection. And if your memory balks, refuses to act, compel it to obey you. If you make a demand upon it and it fails to respond—you cannot remember—do not let the matter go by. Demand of the memory that it bring back that which you require. Keep the need before you.
In this constant, persistent, cheerful, willing use of the memory lies great happiness and content. “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” The more, in reason, the athlete uses his muscles the stronger they become. And think of the radiant joy that is the natural accompaniment of a healthy, vigorous body. What constant pleasure is his who calls upon a physical body which readily and willingly responds! Equally so is it with the memory and all the mind. Activity keeps it in health. In this glorious condition it readily responds to all calls, it is radiantly alive, and I know of no joy greater that can be given to man than that in body, mind, and soul he is a radiating center of activity, receiving and giving on every hand.
In conclusion, here are a few practical words upon the other side of the question, on forgetting, for there is a forgetting that is of great help to the power of remembering. Fix these precepts firmly in your mind:
Forget evil imaginations.
Forget the slander you have heard.
Forget the meanness of small souls.
Forget the faults of your friends.
Forget the injuries done you by your enemies.
Forget the misunderstandings of yesterday.
Forget all malice, all fault-finding, all injuries, all hardness, all unlovely and distressing things.
Start out every day with a clean sheet. Remember only the sweet, beautiful and lovely things, and you will thus be as a human sun of righteousness, with healing in your rays.