Famous leaders among men

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

To another friend he wrote of the extreme stillness of the place: "A passer-by is an event. The only noise ever made is by the hens. The only thing that ever happens is when we miss the cat. But we always keep awake at the sunsets, they are splendid."

The next year, June 30, 1881, he was asked to give the address at Harvard College, on the Centennial Anniversary of the Phi Beta Kappa. His subject was "The Scholar in a Republic."

"It was," says Thomas Wentworth Higginson, "the tardy recognition of him by his own college and his own literary society, and proved to be, in some respects, the most remarkable effort of his life. He never seemed more at his ease, more colloquial and more extemporaneous; and he held an unwilling audience spellbound, while bating absolutely nothing of his radicalism."

He pleaded for the great reforms for which he had labored all his life. "The fathers," he said, "touched their highest level when, with stout-hearted and serene faith, they trusted God that it was safe to leave men with all the rights he gave them. Let us be worthy of their blood, and save this sheet-anchor of the race,—universal suffrage,—God's church, God's school, God's method of gently binding men into commonwealths in order that they may at last melt into brothers....

"These agitations are the opportunities and the means God offers us to refine the taste, mould the character, lift the purpose, and educate the moral sense of the masses, on whose intelligence and self-respect rests the State. God furnishes these texts. He gathers for us this audience, and only asks of our coward lips to preach the sermons....

"If in this critical battle for universal suffrage ... there be any weapon, which, once taken from the armory, will make victory certain, it will be, as it has been in art, literature, and society, summoning woman into the political arena.... The literary class, until half a dozen years, has taken note of this great uprising only to fling every obstacle in its way.

"The first glimpse we get of Saxon blood in history is that line of Tacitus in his 'Germany,' which reads, 'In all grave matters they consult their women.' Years hence, when robust Saxon sense has flung away Jewish superstition and Eastern prejudice, and put under its foot fastidious scholarship and squeamish fashion, some second Tacitus, from the Valley of the Mississippi, will answer to him of the Seven Hills, 'In all grave questions we consult our women.' ...

"To be as good as our fathers we must be better.... With serene faith they persevered. Let us rise to their level. Crush appetite and prohibit temptation if it rots great cities."

In the winter of 1882 he made his last lecture tour, when he was seventy-one. He had the same noble presence, the same exquisitely toned voice which began his speech as in ordinary conversation, the same calm self-poised manner, as in middle life. The eyes were blue and small, the smile sweet, the figure straight, the whole bearing one of perfect mastery of both self and audience. I have heard, "his attitude was a study for the sculptor—yet unconscious and natural," truly says Mr. Martyn. "The weight of the body was usually supported upon the left foot, with the right slightly advanced at an easy angle—an attitude of combined firmness and repose."

His speeches were never written out. He disliked writing, and thought it "a mild form of slavery—a man chained to an ink-pot." He said, "The chief thing I aim at is to master my subject. Then I earnestly try to get the audience to think as I do."