Another man to whom I feel under obligation whose name I do not know—I know Burns, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Wagner, but there are some other fellows whose names I do not know—is he who chiseled the Venus de Milo. This man helped to civilize the world; and there is nothing under the sun so pathetic as the perfect. Whoever creates the perfect has thought and labored and suffered; and no perfect thing has ever been done except through suffering and except through the highest and holiest thought, and among this class of men is Wagner. Let me tell you something more. You know I am a great believer. There is no man in the world who believes more in human nature than I do. No man believes more in the nobility and splendor of humanity than I do; no man feels more grateful than I to the self-denying, heroic, splendid souls who have made this world fit for ladies and gentlemen to live in. But I believe that the human mind has reached its top in three departments. I don't believe the human race—no matter if it lives millions of years more upon this wheeling world—I don't believe the human race will ever produce in the world anything greater, sublimer, than the marbles of the Greeks. I do not believe it. I believe they reach absolutely the perfection of form and the expression of force and passion in stone. The Greeks made marble as sensitive as flesh and as passionate as blood. I don't believe that any human being of any coming race—no matter how many suns may rise and set, or how many religions may rise and fall, or how many languages be born and decay—I don't believe any human being will ever excel the dramas of Shakespeare. Neither do I believe that the time will ever come when any man with such instruments of music as we now have, and having nothing but the common air that we now breathe, will ever produce greater pictures in sound, greater music, than Wagner. Never! Never! And I don't believe he will ever have a better interpreter than Anton Seidl. Seidl is a poet in sound, a sculptor in sound. He is what you might call an orchestral orator, and as such he expresses the deepest feelings, the highest aspirations and the in-tensest and truest love of which the brain and heart of man are capable.
Now, I am glad, I am delighted, that the people here in this city and in various other cities of our great country are becoming civilized enough to appreciate these harmonies; I am glad they are civilized at last enough to know that the home of music is tone, not tune; that the home of music is in harmonies where you braid them like rainbows; I am glad they are great enough and civilized enough to appreciate the music of Wagner, the greatest music in this world. Wagner sustains the same relation to other composers that Shakespeare does to other dramatists, and any other dramatist compared with Shakespeare is like one tree compared with an immeasurable forest, or rather like one leaf compared with a forest; and all the other composers of the world are embraced in the music of Wagner.
"Nobody has written anything more tender than he, nobody anything sublimer than he. Whether it is the song of the deep, or the warble of the mated bird, nobody has excelled Wagner; he has expressed all that the human heart is capable of appreciating. And now, gentlemen, having troubled you long enough, and saying long live Anton Seidl, I bid you good-night."
LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF REAR ADMIRAL SCHLEY.
New York, November 26, 1898.
* The Lotos Club did honor to Rear Admiral Winfield Scott
Schley, and incidentally, to the United States, at its
clubhouse in Fifth Avenue last night. All day long the
square, blue pennant, blazoned with the two stars of a Rear
Admiral, snapped in the wind, signifying to all who saw it
that the Lotos Clubhouse was for the time being the flagship
of the erstwhile Flying Squadron.
Within the home of the club were gathered men who like the
guest of the evening were prominent in the war with Spain,
The navy was represented by Capt. Charles D. Sigs-Dee, Capt.
A. T. Mahan and Captain Goodrich. From the army there was
Brig. Gen. W F. Randolph, and from civil life many men
prominent in the business, professional and social life of
the city. The one impulse that led these men to brave the
storm was their desire to pay their respects to one of the
men who had done so much to win laurels for the American
arms.
The parlors and dining rooms of the clubhouse wore thrown
into one in order to accommodate the three hundred men
present fit the dinner. Smilax covered the walls, save hero
and there where the American flag was draped in graceful
folds. From the archway under which the table of honor was
spread, hung a large National ensign and a Rear Admiral's
pennant.
The menu was unique. Etched on a cream-tinted paper appeared
an open nook, and on the tops of the pages was inscribed,
"Logge of the Goode Ship Lotos." "Dinner to Rear Admiral
Winfield Scott Schley, given in the cabin of ye Shippe, Nov.
26, l898, Lat. 40 degrees 42 minutes 43 seconds north;
longitude, 74 degrees 3 seconds west."
On each side of the menu was stretched a string of signal
flags, giving the orders made famous by Admiral Schley in
the naval engagement of July 3, 1898. On the second page of
the menu was a fine etching of the Brooklyn, Admiral
Schley's flagship. The souvenir menu was inclosed in blue
paper, upon which were two white stars, the whole
representing Rear Admiral Schley's pennant.
MR.PRESIDENT, Gentlemen of the Club—Boys: I congratulate all of you and I congratulate myself, and I will tell you why. In the first place, we were well born, and we were all born rich, all of us. We belong to a great race. That is something; that is having a start, to feel that in your veins flows heroic blood, blood that has accomplished great things and has planted the flag of victory on the field of war. It is a great thing to belong to a great race.
I congratulate you and myself on another thing; we were born in a great nation, and you can't be much of a man without having a nation behind you, with you; Just think about it! What would Shakespeare have been, if he had been born in Labrador? I used to know an old lawyer in southern Illinois, a smart old chap, who mourned his unfortunate surroundings. He lived in Pinkneyville, and occasionally drank a little too freely of Illinois wine; and when in his cups he sometimes grew philosophic and egotistic. He said one day, "Boys, I have got more brains than you have, I have, but I have never had a chance. I want you just to think of it. What would Daniel Webster have been, by God, if he had settled in Pinkneyville?"