1886-1887
The balance of power in Brooklyn and New York during my lifetime had always been with the pulpit. I was in my fifty-fourth year, and had shared honours with the most devout and fearless ministers of the Gospel so long that when two monster receptions were proposed, in celebration of the services of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. R.S. Storrs, D.D., I became almost wickedly proud of the privileges of my associations. These two eminent men were in the seventies. Dr. Storrs had been installed pastor of the Church of Pilgrims in 1846; Mr. Beecher pastor of Plymouth Church in 1847. They were both stalwart in body then, both New Englanders, both Congregationalists, mighty men, genial as a morning in June. Both world-renowned, but different. Different in stature, in temperament, in theology. They had reached the fortieth year of pastoral service. No movement for the welfare of Brooklyn in all these years was without the benediction of their names.
The pulpit had accomplished wonders. In Brooklyn alone look at the pulpit-builders. There were Rev. George W. Bethune of the Dutch Reformed Church, Rev. Dr. Samuel H. Cox, Rev. W. Ichabod Spencer, Rev. Dr. Samuel Thayer Speer of the Presbyterian Church, Dr. John Summerfield and Dr. Kennedy of the Methodist Church, Rev. Dr. Stone and Rev. Dr. Vinton of the Episcopal Church—all denominations pouring their elements of divine splendour upon the community. Who can estimate the power which emanated from the pulpits of Dr. McElroy, or Dr. DeWitt, or Dr. Spring, or Dr. Krebs? Their work will go on in New York though their churches be demolished. Large-hearted men were these pulpit apostles, apart from the clerical obligations of their denominations. No proverb in the world is so abused as the one which declares that the children of ministers never turn out well. They hold the highest places in the nation. Grover Cleveland was the son of a Presbyterian clergyman, Governor Pattison of Pennsylvania, Governor Taylor of Tennessee, were sons of Methodist preachers. In congressional and legislative halls they are scattered everywhere.
Of all the metaphysical discourses that Mr. Beecher delivered, none are so well remembered as those giving his illustrations of life, his anecdotes. Much of his pulpit utterance was devoted to telling what things were like. So the Sermon on the Mount was written, full of similitudes. Like a man who built his house on a rock, like a candle in a candle-stick, like a hen gathering her chickens under her wing, like a net, like salt, like a city on a hill. And you hear the song birds, and you smell the flowers. Mr. Beecher's grandest effects were wrought by his illustrations, and he ransacked the universe for them. We need in our pulpits just such irresistible illustrations, just such holy vivacity. His was a victory of similitudes.
Towards the end of November, 1886, one of the most distinguished sons of a Baptist preacher, Chester A. Arthur, died. He had arisen to the highest point of national honour, and preserved the simplicities of true character. When I was lecturing in Lexington, Kentucky, one summer, I remember with what cordiality he accosted me in a crowd.
"Are you here?" he said; "why, it makes me feel very much at home."
Mr. Arthur aged fifteen years in the brief span of his administration. He was very tired. Almost his last words were, "Life is not worth living." Our public men need sympathy, not criticism. Macaulay, after all his brilliant career in Parliament, after being world-renowned among all who could admire fine writing, wrote this:
"Every friendship which a man may have becomes precarious as soon as he engages in politics."
Political life is a graveyard of broken hearts. Daniel Webster died of a broken heart at Marshfield. Under the highest monument in Kentucky lies Henry Clay, dead of a broken heart. So died Henry Wilson, at Natick, Mass.; William H. Seward at Auburn, N.Y.; Salmon P. Chase, in Cincinnati. So died Chester A. Arthur, honoured, but worried.
The election of Abram S. Hewitt as mayor of New York in 1886 restored the confidence of the best people. Behind him was a record absolutely beyond criticism, before him a great Christian opportunity. We made the mistake, however, of ignoring the great influence upon our civic prosperity of the business impulse of the West. We in New York and Brooklyn were a self-satisfied community, unmindful of our dependence upon the rest of the American continent. My Western trips were my recreation. An occasional lecture tour accomplished for me what yachting or baseball does for others. My congregation understood this, and never complained of my absence. They realised that all things for me turned into sermons. No man sufficiently appreciates his home unless sometimes he goes away from it. It made me realise what a number of splendid men and women there were in the world Man as a whole is a great success; woman, taking her all in all, is a great achievement, and the reason children die is because they are too lovely to stay out of paradise.
Three weeks in the West brought me back to Brooklyn supremely optimistic. There was more business in the markets than men could attend to. Times had changed. In Cincinnati once I was perplexed by the difference in clock time. They have city time and railroad time there. I asked a gentleman about it.
"Tell me, how many kinds of time have you here?" I asked. "Three kinds," he replied, "city time, railroad time, and hard time."
There was no "hard time" at the close of 1886. The small rate of interest we had been compelled to take for money had been a good thing. It had enlivened investments in building factories and starting great enterprises. The 2 per cent. per month interest was dead. The fact that a few small fish dared to swim through Wall Street, only to be gobbled up, did not stop the rising tide of national welfare. We were going ahead, gaining, profiting even by the lives of those who were leaving us behind.
The loss of the Rev. J. Hyatt Smith restored the symbol and triumph of self-sacrifice. In the most exact sense of the word he was a genius. He wasted no time in his study that he could devote to others, he was always busy raising money to pay house rent for some poor woman, exhausting his energies in trying to keep people out of trouble, answering the call of every school, of every reformatory, every philanthropic institution. Had he given more time to study, he would hardly have had an equal in the American pulpit. He depended always upon the inspiration of the moment. Sometimes he failed on this account. I have heard him when he had the pathos of a Summerfield, the wit of a Sidney Smith, and the wondrous thundering phraseology of a Thomas Carlyle. He had been everywhere, seen everything, experienced great variety of gladness, grief, and betrayal. If you had lost a child, he was the first man at your side to console you. If you had a great joy, his was the first telegram to congratulate you. For two years he was in Congress. His Sundays in Washington were spent preaching in pulpits of all denominations. The first time I ever saw him was when he came to my house in Philadelphia, ringing the door bell, that he might assuage a great sorrow that had come to me. He was always in the shadowed home. How much the world owes to such a nature is beyond the world's gift to return. His wit was of the kind that, like the dew, refreshes. He never laughed at anything but that which ought to be laughed at. He never dealt in innuendoes that tipped both ways. We were old friends of many vicissitudes. Together we wept and laughed and planned. He had such subtle ways of encouragement—as when he told me that he had read a lecture of mine to his dying daughter, and described how it had comforted her. His was a life of profound self-sacrifice, but "weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."
The new year of 1887 began with a controversy that filled the air with unpleasant confusion. A small river of ink was poured upon it, a vast amount of talk was made about it. A priest in the Roman Catholic Church, Father McGlynn, was arraigned by Archbishop Corrigan for putting his hand in the hot water of politics. In various ways I was asked my opinion of it all. My most decided opinion was that outsiders had better keep their hands out of the trouble. The interference of people outside of a church with its internal affairs only makes things worse. The policy of any church is best known by its own members. The controversy was not a matter into which I could consistently enter.
The earth began its new year in hard luck. The earthquake in Constantinople, in February, was only one of a series of similar shakes elsewhere. The scientists were always giving us a lot of trouble. Electric showers in the sun disturbed our climate. Comets had been shooting about the sky with enough fire in their tails to obliterate us. Caracas was shaken, Lisbon buried, Java very badly cracked. It is a shaky, rheumatic, epileptic old world, and in one of its stupendous convulsions it will die. It's a poor place in which to make permanent investments. It was quite as insecure in its human standards as in its scientific incompetence.
Our laws were moral earthquakes that destroyed our standards. We were opposed to sneak thieves, but we admired the two million dollar rascals. Why not a tax of five or ten thousand dollars to license the business of theft, so that we might put an end to the small scoundrels who had genius enough only to steal door mats, or postage stamps, or chocolate drops, and confine the business to genteel robbery? A robber paying a privilege of ten thousand dollars would then be able legally to abscond with fifty thousand dollars from a bank; or, by watering the stock of a railroad, he would be entitled to steal two hundred thousand dollars at a clip. The thief's licence ought to be high, because he would so soon make it up.
A licence on blasphemy might have been equally advantageous. It could be made high enough so that we could sweep aside all those who swear on a small scale, those who never get beyond "By George!" "My stars!" or "Darn it!" Then, again, the only way to put an end to murder in America is by high licenced murderers. Put a few men in to manage the business of murder. The common assassins who do their work with car hooks, dull knives or Paris green, should be abolished by law. Let the few experts do it who can accomplish murder without pain: by chloroform or bulldog revolvers. Give these men all the business. The licence in these cases should be twenty thousand dollars, because the perquisites in gold watches, money safes, and plethoric pocket-books would soon offset the licence.
High licences in rum-selling had always been urged, and always resulted in dead failures; therefore the whole method of legal restraint in crime can be dismissed with irony. The overcrowding in the East was crushing our ethical and practical ambition. That is why the trains going westward were so crowded that there was hardly room enough to stand in them. We were restoring ourselves in Kansas and Missouri. After lecturing, in the spring of 1887, in fifteen Western cities, including Chicago, St. Louis, and westward to the extreme boundaries of Kansas, I returned a Westerner to convert the Easterner. In the West they called this prosperity a boom, but I never liked the word, for a boom having swung one way is sure to swing the other. It was a revival of enterprise which, starting in Birmingham, Ala., advanced through Tennessee, and spread to Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri. My forecast at this time was that the men who went West then would be the successes in the next twenty years. The centre of American population, which two years before had been a little west of Cincinnati, had moved to Kansas, the heart of the continent. The national Capital should have been midway between the Atlantic and the Pacific, in which case the great white buildings in Washington could have been turned into art academies, and museums and libraries.
Prohibition in Kansas and Iowa was making honest men. I did not see an intoxicated man in either of these States. All the young men in Kansas and Iowa were either prohibitionists or loafers. The West had lost the song plaintive and adopted the song jubilant.
In the spring of this year, 1887, Brooklyn was examined by an investigating committee. Even when Mayor Low was in power, three years before, the city was denounced by Democratic critics, so Mayor Whitney, of course, was the victim of Republican critics. The whole thing was mere partisan hypocrisy. If anyone asked me whether I was a Republican or a Democrat, I told them that I had tried both, and got out of them both. I hope always to vote, but the title of the ticket at the top will not influence me. Outside of heaven Brooklyn was the quietest place on Sunday. The Packer and the Polytechnic institutes took care of our boys and girls. Our judiciary at this time included remarkable men: Judge Neilson, Judge Gilbert, and Judge Reynolds. We had enough surplus doctors to endow a medical college for fifty other cities.
It looked as though our grandchildren would be very happy. We were only in the early morning of development. The cities would be multiplied a hundredfold, and yet we were groaning because a few politicians were conducting an investigation for lack of something better to do. From time immemorial we had prayed for the President and Congress, but I never heard of any prayers for the State Legislatures, and they needed them most of all. They brought about the groans of the nation, and we were constantly in complaint of them. I remember a great mass meeting in the Academy of Music in Brooklyn, at which I was present, to protest against the passage of the Gambling Pool Bill, as it was called. I was accused of being over-confident because I said the State Senate would not pass it without a public hearing. A public hearing was given, however, and my faith in the legislators of the State increased. We ministers of Brooklyn had to do a good deal of work outside of our pulpits, outside of our churches, on the street and in the crowds.
When the Ives Gambling Pool Bill was passed I urged that the Legislature should adjourn. The race track men went to Albany and triumphed. Brooklyn was disgraced before the world by our race tracks at Coney Island, which were a public shame!
All the money in the world, however, was not abused. Philanthropists were helping the Church. Miss Wolfe bequeathed a million dollars to evangelisation in New York; Mr. Depau, of Illinois, bequeathed five million dollars to religion, and the remaining three million of his fortune only to his family. There were others—Cyrus McCormick, James Lenox, Mr. Slater, Asa D. Packer. They, with others, were men of great deeds. We were just about ready to appreciate these progressive events.
In the summer of 1887 I urged a great World's Fair, because I thought it was due in our country, to the inventors, the artists, the industries of America. How to set the idea of a World's Fair agoing? It only needed enthusiasm among the prominent merchants and the rich men. All great things first start in one brain, in one heart. I proposed that a World's Fair should be held in the great acreage between Prospect Park and the sea.
In 1853 there was a World's Fair in New York. In the same year the dismemberment of the Republic was expected, and a book of several volumes was advertised in London, entitled "History of the Federal Government from the Foundation to the Dissipation of the United States." Only one volume was ever published. The other volumes were never printed. What a difference in New York city then, when it opened its Crystal Palace, and thirty-four years later—in 1887! That Crystal Palace was the beginning of World's Fairs in this country.
In the presence of the epauleted representatives of foreign nations, before a vast multitude, Franklin Pierce, President of the United States, declared it open, and as he did so Julien, the inspired musical leader of his day, raised his baton for an orchestra of three thousand instruments, while thousands of trained voices sang "God Save the Queen," "The Marseillaise," "Bonnie Doon," "The Harp that once through Tara's Halls," and "Hail Columbia." What that Crystal Palace, opened in New York in 1853, did for art, for science, for civilisation, is beyond record. The generation that built it has for the most part vanished but future generations will be inspired by them.
The summer of 1887 opened the baseball season of America, and I deplored an element of roughness and loaferism that attached itself to the greatest game of our country. One of the national events of this season of that year was a proposal to remove the battle-flag of the late war. Good sense prevailed, and the controversy was satisfactorily settled; otherwise the whole country would have been aflame. It was not merely an agitation over a few bits of bunting. The most arousing, thrilling, blood-stirring thing on earth is a battle-flag. Better let the old battle-flags of our three wars hang where they are. Only one circumstance could disturb them, and that would be the invasion of a foreign power and the downfall of the Republic. The strongest passions of men are those of patriotism.
The best things that a man does in the world usually take a lifetime to make. A career is a life job, and no one is sure whether it was worthy or not till it is over. I except doctors from this rule, of whom Homer says:—
A wise physician skilled our wounds to heal
Is more than armies to the public weal.
Some may remember the stalwart figure of Dr. Joseph Hutchinson, one of the best American surgeons. For some years, in the streets of Brooklyn, he was a familiar and impressive figure on horseback. He rode superbly, and it was his custom to make his calls in that way. He died in this year. Daniel Curry was another significant, superior man of a different sort, who also died in the summer of 1887. He was an editor and writer of the Methodist Church. At his death he told one thing that will go into the classics of the Church; and five hundred years beyond, when evangelists quote the last words of this inspired man, they will recall the dying vision that came to Daniel Curry. He saw himself in the final judgment before the throne, and knew not what to do on account of his sins. He felt that he was lost, when suddenly Christ saw him and said, "I will answer for Daniel Curry." In this world of vast population it is wonderful to find only a few men who have helped to carry the burden of others with distinction for themselves. Most of us are driven.
In the two years and a half that our Democratic party had been in power, our taxes had paid in a surplus to the United States treasury of $125,000,000. The whole country was groaning under an infamous taxation. Most of it was spent by the Republican party, three or four years before, to improve navigation on rivers with about two feet of water in them in the winter, and dry in summer. In the State of Virginia I saw one of these dry creeks that was to be improved. Taxation caused the war of the Revolution. It had become a grinding wheel of government that rolled over all our public interests. Politicians were afraid to touch the subject for fear they might offend their party. I touch upon it here because those who live after me may understand, by their own experience, the infamy of political piracy practised in the name of government taxation.
We had our school for scandal in America over-developed. A certain amount of exposure is good for the soul, but our newspaper headlines over-reached this ideal purpose. They cultivated liars and encouraged their lies. The peculiarity of lies is their great longevity. They are a productive species and would have overwhelmed the country and destroyed George Washington except for his hatchet. Once born, the lie may live twenty, thirty, or forty years. At the end of a man's life sometimes it is healthier than he ever was. Lies have attacked every occupant of the White House, have irritated every man since Adam, and every good woman since Eve. Today the lie is after your neighbour; to-morrow it is after you. It travels so fast that a million people can see it the next morning. It listens at keyholes, it can hear whispers: it has one ear to the East, the other to the West. An old-fashioned tea-table is its jubilee, and a political campaign is its heaven. Avoid it you may not, but meet it with calmness and without fear. It is always an outrage, a persecution.
Nothing more offensive to public sentiment could have occurred than the attempt made in New York in the autumn of 1887 to hinder the appointment of a new pastor of Trinity Church, on the plea that he came from a foreign country, and therefore was an ally to foreign labour. It was an outrage on religion, on the Church, on common sense. As a nation, however, we were safe. There was not another place in the world where its chief ruler could travel five thousand miles, for three weeks, unprotected by bayonets, as Mr. Cleveland did on his Presidential tour of the country. It was a universal huzzah, from Mugwumps, Republicans, and Democrats. We were a safe nation because we destroyed Communism.
The execution of the anarchists in Chicago, in November, 1887, was a disgusting exhibition of the gallows. It took ten minutes for some of them to die by strangulation. Nothing could have been more barbaric than this method of hanging human life. I was among the first to publicly propose execution by electricity. Mr. Edison, upon a request from the government, could easily have arranged it. I was particularly horrified with the blunders of the hangman's methods, because I was in a friend's office in New York, when the telegraph wires gave instantaneous reports of the executions in Chicago. I made notes of these flashes of death.
"Now the prisoners leave the cells," said the wire; "now they are ascending the stairs"; "now the rope is being adjusted"; "now the cap is being drawn"; "now they fall." Had I been there I would probably have felt thankful that I was brought up to obey the law, and could understand the majesty of restraining powers. One of these men was naturally kind and generous, I was told, but was embittered by one who had robbed him of everything; and so he became an enemy to all mankind. One of them got his antipathy for all prosperous people from the fact that his father was a profligate nobleman, and his mother a poor, maltreated, peasant woman. The impulse of anarchy starts high up in society. Chief among our blessings was an American instinct for lawfulness in the midst of lawless temptation. We were often reminded of this supreme advantage as we saw passing into shadowland the robed figure of an upright man.
The death of Judge Greenwood of Brooklyn, in November, 1887, was a reminder of such matters. He had seen the nineteenth century in its youth and in its old age. From first to last, he had been on the right side of all its questions of public welfare. We could, appropriately, hang his portrait in our court rooms and city halls. The artist's brush would be tame indeed compared with the living, glowing, beaming face of dear old Judge Greenwood in the portrait gallery of my recollections.
The national event of this autumn was President Cleveland's message to Congress, which put squarely before us the matter of our having a protective tariff. It was the great question of our national problem, and called for oratory and statesmanship to answer it. The whole of Europe was interested in the subject. I advocated free trade as the best understanding of international trading, because I had talked with the leaders of political thought in Europe, and I understood both sides, as far as my capacity could compass them. In America we were frequently compared to the citizens of the French Republic because of our nervous force, our restlessness, but we were more patient. In 1887, the resignation of President Grévy in France re-established this fact. Though an American President becomes offensive to the people, we wait patiently till his four years are out, even if we are not very quiet about it. We are safest when we keep our hands off the Constitution. The demonstration in Paris emphasised our Republican wisdom. Public service is an altar of sacrifice for all who worship there.
The death of Daniel Manning, ex-Secretary of the Treasury, in December, 1887, was another proof of this. He fell prostrate on the steps of his office, in a sickness that no medical aid could relieve. Four years before no one realised the strength that was in him. He threw body and soul into the whirlpool of his work, and was left in the rapids of celebrity. In the closing notes of 1887, I find recorded the death of Mrs. William Astor. What a sublime lifetime of charity and kindness was hers! Mrs. Astor's will read like a poem. It had a beauty and a pathos, and a power entirely independent of rhythmical cadence. The document was published to the world on a cold December morning, with its bequests of hundreds of thousands of dollars to the poor and needy, the invalids and the churches. It put a warm glow over the tired and grizzled face of the old year. It was a benediction upon the coming years.