"Monumental Inscription—expired yesterday, regretted by all good men, The Federal Administration Of The Government Of The United States, aged 12 years. This Monumental Inscription to the virtues and the services of the deceased is raised by the Sentinel of Boston."
It might have been a recent editorial. Van Buren was always cartooned as a fox or a rat. Horace Greeley told me once that he had not had a sound sleep for fifteen years, and he was finally put to death by American politics. The cartoons of Mr. Blaine and Mr. Cleveland during their election battle, as compared to those of fifty years before, were seraphic as the themes of Raphael. It was not necessary to go so far back for precedent. The game had not changed. The building of our new Raymond Street jail in Brooklyn, in 1886, was a game which the politicians played, called "money, money, who has got the money?" Suddenly there was an arraignment in the courts. Mr. Jaehne was incarcerated in Sing Sing for bribery. Twenty-five New York aldermen were accused. Nineteen of them were saloon keepers. There was a fearful indifference to the illiteracy of our leaders in 1886. It threatened the national intelligence of the future.
In the rhapsody of May, however, in the resurrection of the superlative beauties of spring, we forgot our human deficiencies. In the first week of lilacs, the Americanised flower of Persia, we aspired to the breadth and height and the heaven of our gardens. The generous lilac, like a great purple sea of loveliness, swept over us in the full tide of spring. It was the forerunner of joy; joy of fish in the brooks, of insects in the air, of cattle in the fields, of wings to the sky. Sunshine, shaken from the sacred robes of God! Spring, the spiritual essence of heaven and physical beauty come to earth in many forms—in the rose, in the hawthorn white and scarlet, in the passion flower. In this season of transition we hear the murmurings of heaven. There were spring poets in 1886, as there had been in all ages.
Love and marriage came over the country like a divine opiate, inspired, I believe, by that love story in the White House, which culminated on June 2, 1886, in the wedding of Mr. and Mrs. Cleveland. Never in my knowledge were there so many weddings all over the United States as during the week when this official wedding took place in the White House. The representatives of the foreign Governments in Washington were not invited to Mr. Cleveland's wedding. We all hoped that they would not make such fools of themselves as to protest—but they did. They were displeased at the President's omission to invite them. It was always a wish of Mr. Cleveland's to separate the happiness of his private life from that of his public career, so as to protect Mrs. Cleveland from the glare to which he himself was exposed. His wedding was an intimate, private matter to him, and if there is any time in a man's life when he ought to do as he pleases it is when he gets married. It was a remarkable wedding in some respects, remarkable for its love story, for its distinguished character, its American privacy, its independent spirit. The whole country was rapturously happy over it. The foreign ministers who growled might have benefited by the example of Americanism in the affair. Even the reporters, none of whom were invited, were happy over it, and gave a more vivid account of the joyous scene than they could have given had they been present.
The difference in the ages of the President and his beautiful bride was widely discussed. Into the garland of bridal roses let no one ever twist a sprig of night-shade. If 49 would marry 22, if summer is fascinated with spring, whose business is it but their own? Both May and August are old enough to take care of themselves, and their marriage is the most noteworthy moment of their too short season of life. Some day her voice is silenced, and the end of the world has come for him—the morning dead, the night dead, the air dead, the world dead. For his sake, for her sake, do not spoil their radiance with an impious regret. They will endure the thorns of life when they are stronger in each other's love.
That June wedding at the White House was the nucleus of happiness, from which grew a great wave of matrimony. The speed of God's will was increasing in America. Most of the things managed by divine instinct are characterised by speed—rapid currents, swift lightnings, swift coming and going of lives. In the old-fashioned days a man got a notion that there was sanctity in tardiness. It was a great mistake. In America we had arrived at that state of mind when we wanted everything fast—first and fast. Fast horses, fast boats, fast runners are all good things for the human race.
The great yacht races of September 7, 1886, in which the "May Flower" distanced the "Galatea" by two miles and a half, was a spanking race. Our sporting blood was roused to fighting pitch, and we became more active in every way of outdoor sports. Lawn tennis tournaments were epidemic all over the country. There were good and bad effects from all of them. Those romping sports developed a much finer physical condition in our American women. Lawn tennis and croquet were hardening and beautifying the race. From the English and German women we adopted athletics for our own women. Our girls began to travel more frequently in Europe. It looked as though many of the young ladies who prided themselves upon their bewitching languors and fashionable dreaminess, would be neglected by young men in favour of the more athletic types. It had been decided, in the social channels of our life, that doll babies were not of much use in the struggle, that women must have the capacity and the strength to sweep out a room without fainting; that to make an eatable loaf of bread was more important than the satin cheek or the colour of hair that one strong fever could uproot. I was accused of being ambitious that Americans should have a race of Amazons. I was not. I did want them to have bodies to fit their great souls. What I did wish to avoid, in this natural transition, was a misdirected use of its advantages. There is dissipation in outdoor life, as well as indoors, and this was to be deplored. I wanted everything American to come out ahead.
In science we were still far behind. The Charleston earthquake in September, 1886, proved this. Our philosophers were disgusted that the ministers and churches down there devoted their time to praying and moralising about the earthquake, when only natural phenomena were the cause. Science had no information or comfort to give, however. The only thing the scientist did was to predict a great tidal wave which would come and destroy all that was left of the previous calamity. Science lied again. The tidal wave did not come; the September rains stopped, and Charleston began to rebuild. That is one of the wonderful things about America; we are not only able to restore our damages, but we have a mania for rebuilding. Our chief fault lies in the fact that we rebuild for profit rather than for beauty of character or moral strength.
There had been a time during my pastorate when Brooklyn promised to be the greatest watering place in America. We were in a fair way of becoming the summer capital of the United States. It was destroyed by the loafers and the dissoluteness of Coney Island. In the autumn of 1886, Brooklyn was more indignant than I had ever seen it before, and I knew it intimately for a quarter of a century. Our trade was damaged, our residences were depreciated, because the gamblers and liquor dealers were in power. Part of the summer people were too busy looking for a sea serpent reported to be in the East River or up the Hudson to observe that a Dragon of Evil was twining about the neck and waist and body of the two great cities by the sea.
In contrast to all this political treachery in the North there developed a peculiar symbol of political sincerity in Tennesee. Two brothers, Robert and Alfred Taylor, were running for Governor of that State—one on the Republican and the other on the Democratic ticket. At night they occupied the same room together. On the same platform they uttered sentiments directly opposite in meaning. And yet, Robert said to a crowd about to hoot his brother Alfred, "When you insult my brother you insult me." This was a symbol of political decency that we needed. One of the great wants of the world, however, was a better example in "high life." We were shocked by the moral downfall of Sir Charles Dilke in England, by the dissolute conduct of an American official in Mexico, by the dissipations of a Senator who attempted to address the United States Senate in a state of intoxication.