"I sing the glories of cinchona and the man
Who first invented calomel."
Yes, if the Pilgrims had landed upon the far Western prairies or the Southern savannas, they would never have made America; they would never have won a glory beyond that of Columbus, who only discovered America, whereas these men created it. [Applause.]
But not a place alone. New England is also a race; the race that plants colonies and makes nations; the race that carries everywhere a free press, a free pulpit, an open Bible, and that has almost learned to spell and parse its own language; the race which began the battle for civil and religious liberty in the time of Elizabeth, which fought the good fight at Edgehill, which, beside Concord Bridge, "fired the shot heard round the world," which made a continent secure for liberty at Appomattox. [Applause.]
And New England is not alone a place and a race; it is as well an idea, or a congeries of ideas, so closely joined as properly to be called but one; and this idea is not the idea of force, but the force of ideas.
But, gentlemen, I am in danger of forgetting that a marked characteristic of New Englanders is an unwillingness to talk, and especially to talk about themselves. And I know that you are eager to listen to the illustrious men whom we have the honor to gather about our humble board this evening.
CAUSES OF UNPOPULARITY
[Speech of Rev. Dr. Heman L. Wayland at the eighty-fourth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 23, 1889. The President, Cornelius N. Bliss, proposed the query for Dr. Wayland, "Why are New Englanders Unpopular?" enforcing it with the following quotations: "Do you question me as an honest man should do for my simple true judgment?" [Much Ado About Nothing, Act I, Sc. I], and "Merit less solid less despite has bred: the man that makes a character makes foes" [Edward Young]. Turning to Dr. Wayland, Mr. Bliss said: "Our sister, the New England Society of Philadelphia, to-night sends us greeting in the person of her honored President, whom I have the pleasure of presenting to you." The eloquence of Dr. Wayland was loudly applauded; and Chauncey M. Depew declared that he had heard one of the best speeches to which he had ever listened at a New England dinner.]
Mr. President and Gentlemen:—That I am here this evening is as complete a mystery to me as to you. I do not know why your Society, at whose annual meetings orators are as the sand upon the seashore for multitude, should call upon Philadelphia, a city in which the acme of eloquence is attained by a Friends' Yearly Meeting, "sitting under the canopy of silence." I can only suppose that you designed to relieve the insufferable brilliancy of your annual festival, that you wished to dilute the highly-flavored, richly-colored, full-bodied streams of the Croton with the pure, limpid, colorless (or, at any rate, only drab-colored) waters of the Schuylkill. [Laughter.]
My first and wiser impulse was to decline the invitation with which you honored me, or rather the Society of which I am the humblest member. But I considered the great debt we have been under to you for the loan of many of your most accomplished speakers: of Curtis, whose diction is chaste as the snows of his own New England, while his zeal for justice is as fervid as her July sun; of Depew, who, as I listen to him, makes me believe that the doctrine of transmigration is true, and that in a former day his soul occupied the body of one of the Puritan fathers, and that for some lapse he was compelled to spend a period of time in the body of a Hollander [laughter]; of Beaman,[9] one of the lights of your bar; of Evarts, who, whether as statesman or as orator, delights in making historic periods. And this year you have favored us with General Porter,[10] whom we have been trying to capture for our annual dinner, it seems to me, ever since the Mayflower entered Plymouth Bay.