He then proceeded:
"My friend from Massachusetts (Mr. Hoar) requests me to translate that. He does not need it, of course. But another Senator (Mr. Washburn) suggests that some of the rest of us do. I will not attempt to give a literal translation, but I will give an accurate paraphrase, which will show its application. 'Into what crime has he fallen? By what informer has he been accused? What judge has passed upon him? What witness has testified against him? Not one or any of these. A verbose and turgid message has come over from Capri. That settles it. I will interrogate no further.'"
The most ardent admirers of the then President, Mr. Cleveland, could not help joining in the laugh.
Mr. Davis took great delight in his descent from the early settlers of Plymouth, and valued exceedingly the good will of the people of Massachusetts. The members of the Society who were fortunate enough to meet him will not forget their delight in his pleasant companionship, when he visited Massachusetts a few years ago to attend our meeting and contribute a paper to our Proceedings. He had hoped to repeat the visit.
I prefer, instead of undertaking to complete this imperfect sketch by a new portraiture of my honored friend, to add what I said in the Senate, when the loss of Mr. Davis was still recent:—
"Mr. President: There is no Senator who would not be glad to lay a wreath of honor and affection on the monument of Cushman K. Davis. That, however, is more especially the right of his colleague and his successor and the members of the great Committee where he won so much of his fame. I ought to say but a few words.
"The Senate, as its name implies, has been from the beginning, with few exceptions, an assembly of old men. In the course of nature many of its members die in office. That has been true of thirty-eight Senators since I came to the Capitol. Others, a yet larger number, die soon after they leave office. Of the men with whom I have served in this Chamber fifty- eight more are now dead, making in all ninety-six, enough and to spare to organize another Senate elsewhere. To that number has been added every Vice-President but two. Upon those who have died in office eulogies have been pronounced in this Chamber and in the House. The speakers have obeyed the rule demanded by the decencies of funeral occasions—nil de mortuis nisi bonum—if not the command born of a tenderer pity for human frailty—jam parce sepulto. But in general, with scarcely and exception, the portraitures have been true and faithful. They prove that the people of the American States, speaking through their legislative assemblies, are not likely to select men to represent them in this august assembly who are lacking in high qualities either of intellect or of character. However that may be, it is surely true of Mr. Davis that whatever has been or will be said of him to- day, or was said of him when the news of his death first shocked the country, is just what would have been said when he was alive by any man who knew him. I have served with him here nearly fourteen years. I have agreed with him and I have differed from him in regard to matters of great pith and moment which deeply stirred the feelings of the people, as they did mine, and doubtless did his own. I never heard any man speak of him but with respect and kindness.
"Of course, Mr. President, in this great century which is just over, when our Republic—this infant Hercules—has been growing from its cradle to its still youthful manhood, the greatest place for a live man has been that of a soldier in time of war and that of a statesman in time of peace. Cushman K. Davis was both. He did a man's full duty in both. No man values more than I do the function of the man of letters. No man reveres more than I do the man of genius who in a loving and reverent way writes the history of a great people, or the poet from whose lyre comes the inspiration which induces heroic action in war and peace. But I do not admit that the title of the historian or that of the poet to the gratitude and affection of mankind is greater than that of the soldier who saves nations, or that of the statesman who creates or preserves them, or who makes them great. I have no patience when I read that famous speech of Gladstone, he and Tennyson being together on a journey, when he modestly puts Mr. Tennyson's title to the gratitude of mankind far above his own. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, declared that Tennyson would be remembered long after he was forgotten. That may be true. But whether a man be remembered or whether he be forgotten; whether his work be appreciated or no; whether his work be known or unknown at the time it is accomplished, is not the test of its greatness or its value to mankind. The man who keeps this moral being, or helps to keep this moral being we call a State in the paths of justice and righteousness and happiness, the direct effect of whose action is felt in the comfort and happiness and moral life of millions upon millions of human lives, who opens and constructs great highways of commerce, who makes schools and universities not only possible but plenty, who brings to pass great policies that allure men from misery, and poverty, and oppression, and serfdom in one world, to free, contented, happy, prosperous homes in another, is a great benefactor to mankind, whether his work be accomplished with sounding of trumpets, or stamping of feet, or clapping of hands, or the roar and tumult of popular applause, or whether it be done in the silence of some committee room, and no man know it but by its results.
"I am not ready to admit that even Shakespeare worked on a higher plane, or was a greater power on earth, than King Alfred or George Washington, even if it be that he will survive them both in the memory of man. The name of every man but one who fought with Leonidas at Thermopylae is forgotten. But is AEschylus greater than Leonidas, or Miltiades, or Themistocles? The literature of Athens preserves to immortality the fame of its great authors. But it was Solon, and Pericles, and Miltiades that created and saved and made great the city, without which the poets could not have existed. Mr. Tennyson himself came nearer the truth than his friend, Mr. Gladstone, when he said:
He
That, through the channels of the state,
Conveys the people's wish, is great;
His name is pure; his fame is free.