) - +**\ ~'Wg?y •/% '°-^P-* £K -.III: .^ 7*^ < P 9 ^ '• JET'' jfl? V .0* ^ % -• * v ^ * v «'_'JJ% <"* ,0 V .<.M>_ "©- a*' •y^u*i < ^ A^ ^# *•'•«* -A k9v* ^ v ^» * o • . * V r- » < .V V » 1 • •* ^ THE BEST AM E R I C AN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY Compiled by Harriet Blackstone Compiler 0/ " Neiv Pieces That Will -Take Prizes in Prize Speaking Contests.' 1 '' > , « « • • HINDS & NOBLE, Publishers 31-33-35 West J5th Street New York City 1 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Two Copies Received AUG 31 1903 Copyright Entry JCUSS A, XXc. No COPY S. Copyright, 1903, by Hinds & Noble Co Our future Orators PREFACE. Now and then in the march of a Nation's life there occurs within a brief period a conflux of events memorable in history. Such a time carries with it into fame some of the men who live and toil for the welfare and honor of their country. It has been the aim of the editor to collect in this volume the best thoughts of the best Ameri- cans of this distinctively notable period in the his- tory of our own Nation — men who are most promi- nent in its affairs, and who stand as the highest types of honesty, intelligence and useful citizen- ship for the emulation of the youth of our land. How many men prominent to-day will be re- membered in years to come, no one living can foresee ; but the records in this book of the thoughts and words and deeds of this expansive period, are worthy of our thoughtful study. These addresses have, for the most part, been selected by the authors themselves, because they are in their own opinion best suited for the col- lection. Some few are retrospective ; they will serve by contrast to show us our development. Some are biographical ; they will keep us in mind VI PREFACE. of the fact that others paved the way for us — ■ that we are followers as well as leaders. The speeches of Webster, Clay, Pitt, Patrick Henry, Calhoun, Lincoln, Beecher, and many others, are to be found in almost every Speaker and Reader now published. They have been de- claimed for years from every school platform in the country, and with most inspiring influence. Andrew Draper says: "The old-time school declamation on recurring red-letter days in the regular routine of the early schools was a great stimulant to boys and girls. It was not more in the words that were heard than in the fact that the boys themselves gave expression to them. It is the doing of things which stirs ambition and creates power, even the doing of things which some one else has done. There are plenty of men prominent in affairs who would gladly testify to the uplifting influences of the master- pieces of oratory and literature on their own lives by means of the school declamation." This is true, and let us have unabated respect and reverence for the orators of the past, but let us also satisfy the universal demand for " some- thing new.''' The speeches in this volume meet this demand. They are certainly " new!' They deal with our present problems and methods of government. They proclaim the thoughts of our wisest men. They will educate and inspire for future effort. PREFACE. v11 Requests for material for this collection have met with generous response from our leading statesmen, financiers, college presidents, minis- ters, and other prominent Americans from all parts of the country. To them we are indebted for the fine addresses presented here. It has afforded pleasure and has been an inspiration to the editor to note the uniform courtesy and kindly interest of these busy, great men of our Nation who have taken the time in the midst of their pressing duties to arrange these, their best thoughts, for the use of the students in our schools and colleges. Surely these gems of thought should help to make good citizens. To those who would declaim these orations the writer offers a few words of suggestion : Do not attempt to speak before an audience except after faithful preparation. Practice vocal exercises until your tones are clear and smooth and round. The voice need not be harsh and, loud to " carry " well. Practice articulation drills until it is easy to speak every word dis- tinctly and beautifully, for " all art is preceded by a certain mechanical skill." Never make a gesture unless it adds to the thought and makes the meaning plainer. Remember that you are simply the medium that presents the thoughts, and your aim should be to put yourself in perfect harmony, mentally and bodily, with your subject. In selecting your oration, make sure it is one Vlll PREFACE. that you heartily believe in, then memorize it so thoroughly that it shall seem to be your own ex- pression of your own ideas. Speak it without affectation — simply, earnestly, directly. Forget self — and your efforts will be worthy the atten- tion of your hearers. A speaker should either entertain, instruct, or inspire to action. Unless he can do this, he should not intrude upon the time and the atten- tion of his hearers. Do not rely upon inspiration. You can not speak well unless you know how, and you should not speak at all unless you have something that is worth saying. So let your reliance be based upon careful preparation, to the end that inspira- tion, when the moment comes, shall find its fitting vehicle in the mastery of your subject and your self. This advice should not discourage, for " it is constructive, and it tears down only to build better." The young man who can see in life the things worthwhile ; who can think of what he sees, and then tell it simply and earnestly, promises well — both for himself and for his country. Harriet Blackstone. May 12, 1903. CONTENTS Americanism .... Puritan Spirit, The . . Our Recent Diplomacy . Value of Judgment, The . Trusts New Movement in Hu- manity, The .... Education for Life . . Immortality of Good Deeds, The .... New Patriotism, The Union Soldier, The . . Men : Made, Self-made, and Unmade . . . Battle of Santiago, The . Work and Play .... March of the Constitution, The Education and the Self- made Man Soldier Boy, The . . . Manly Fellow, A. . . . Daniel Webster .... Spanish Prisoners of War . " Forefathers' Day " . . Citizenship .... Reverence for the Flag Theodore Roosevelt ... I Hon. Albert J. Beveridge . 4 Hon. John Hay .... 10 Charles F. Thwing, D.D. 16 Hon. J. B. Foraker ... 19 William Jewett Tucker, LL.D. . 23 Minot Judson Savage,D.D. 26 Hon. Thomas Brackett Reed 33 Richard Watson Gilder . 40 Hon. John M. Thurston , 42 E. G. Robinson, D.D., LL.D. 46 Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge . 56 Hamilton Wright Mabie . 58 Andrew S. Draper, LL.D. 61 Grover Cleveland . . . 66 Hon. John Davis Long . 69 Cyrus Northrop, LL.D. . 73 Hon. George F. Hoar . . 75 William Dean Howells . 78 Arthur Twining Hadley, LL.D. 83 Hon. Williajn P. Frye . . 89 Gen. Horace Porter ... 92 X CONTENTS. Hon. Elihu Root 105 Art of Optimism, The . William De Witt Hyde, LL.D. 94 New Era in Higher Edu- cation, The . . . James B. Angell, LL.D. . . 98 Decoration Day . . . Hon. W. Bourke Cockran . 102 Profit of the Laborer and Consumer, The . " Open Door " Policy in China, The . . . John Marshall . . . Uplifting of the Negro Race, The .... Last Address of Wil- liam McKinley, The Navy, The .... " Lest We Forget " . Piety and Civic Virtue. Hon. Cuskman K. Davis . Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Booker T. Washington . Admiral George Dewey . . David Starr Jordan, LL.D . Charles Henry Parkhurst, D.D. . Benjamin Harrison . . Henry Van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. Abraham Lincoln . . Commerce .... Our National Safe- guards Hon. Chauncey M. Depew Hon. John William Griggs. G. StanleyHall, LL.D. . . Clark Howell Social Discontent . . William McKinley . . Man With His Hat in His Hand, The . . Cure for Anarch- ism, The .... Expansion .... Uses of Education for Business .... Peacemakers of Blessed Memory .... Gen. Lew Wallace . . Keys to Success, The Edward William Bok . Equipment for Service Woodrow Wilson, LL.D Lyman Abbott, D.D. . . Hon. Henry L. Waiter son 108 no 113 118 125 127 131 134 140 143^ 146^ 150 155 158 160 Charles William Eliot, LL.D. 163 169 172 177 CONTENTS. XI World a Whispering Newell Dwight Hillis, Gallery, The .... D.D. . 179 Growth : An Evidence Nicholas Murray Butler, of Education .... LL.D. 182 Patriotism Hon. Charles Emory Smith 185 Pursuit of Happi- ness, The Charles Dudley Warner . 1 87 Combination of Capital and Consolidation of Labor Justice David J. Brewer . 189 Flag, The Wallace Bruce . . . .191 Modern Fiction .... Opie P. Read 194 Recognize the Unions . M. W. Stryker, LL.D. . .197 America a World Power Archbishop John Ireland . 202 Competition Jacob Gould Schurman, . D.Sc, LL.D 206 General Welfare, The . Hon. Whitelaw Reid . 209 ; National Unity and the State University . . Wm. L. Prather, LL,D. . 214 Our Relations with the World Hon. Franklin MacVeagh 218 Problem of the Philippines Hon. Henry M. Teller . . 222 Genius and Character of Grant Hon. Clark E, Carr . . . 225 Sovereignty Follows the Flag ...... George R. Peck 231 The Conquerors . . . Hon. Cresswell MacLaughlin 234 " Let Us Have Peace " Hon. Carl Schurz .... 238- Honor to the Patriot Spy Edward Everett Hale, D.D. 241 Our Commercial Rela- tions Hon. Shelby Cullom . . . 244 Dead upon the Field of Thomas Wentworth Hig- Honor ginson 246 State Versus Anarchy, The L. Clark Seelye, D.D. , LL.D. 250 Xll CONTENTS. What is Truth ? . . . New Century Greeting, Rufus Choate . . . . Commerce Clause of the Constitution and the Trusts, The . . . Phillips Brooks . . . Labor and Capital . . Retrospect of Oratory, A Henry S, Pritchett, LL.D. . 255 Andrew Carnegie . . . .261 Hon. Joseph H. Choate . . 262 Hon. Philander C, Knox . 270 James H. Baker, M.A., LL.D. 277 Hon. Marcus A. Hanna , .282 Lorenzo Sears 289 INDEX OF AUTHORS. Abbott, Lyman Angell, James B, Baker, James H. Beveridge, Albert J. Bok, Edward William Brewer, David J. Bruce, Wallace Butler, Nicholas Murray Carnegie, Andrew Carr, Clark E. Choate, Joseph H. Cleveland, Grover Cockran, W T . Bourke Cullom, Shelby Davis, Cushman K. Depew, Chauncey M. Dewey, George Draper, Andrew S. Eliot, Charles William Foraker, J. B. Frye, William P. 158 98 277 4 172 189 191 182 261 225 262 66 102 244 108 143 125 61 163 19 89 XIV INDEX OF A UTHORS. Gilder, Richard Watson Griggs, John William Hadley, Arthur Twining Hale, Edward Everett Hall, G. Stanley Hanna, Marcus A. Harrison, Benjamin . Hay, John Higginson, Thomas Wentworth Hillis, Newell Dwight Hoar, George F. Holmes, Oliver Wendell, Jr. . Howell, Clark Howells, William Dean Hyde, William DeWitt Ireland, John Jordan, David Starr . Knox, Philander C. . Lodge, Henry Cabot. Long, John D. Mabie, Hamilton Wright MacLaughlin, Cresswell MacVeagh, Franklin . McKinley, William . Northrop, Cyrus Parkhurst, Charles Henrv» 40 146 83 241 150 282 134 10 246 179 75 no 155 78 94 202 127 270 56 69 58 234 218 118 73 131 INDEX OF AUTHORS. XV Peck, George R. Porter, Horace Prather, William L. . Pritchett, Henry S. . Read, Opie P. Reed, Thomas Brackett Reid, Whitelaw Robinson, E. G. Roosevelt, Theodore Root, Elihu Savage, Minot Judson Schurman, Jacob Gould Schurz, Carl . Sears, Lorenzo Seelye, L. Clark Smith, Charles Emory Stryker, M. W. Teller, Henry M. Thurston, John M. . Thwing, Charles F. . Tucker, William Jewett Van Dyke, Henry Wallace, Lew Warner, Charles Dudley Washington, Booker T. Watterson, Henry L. Wilson, Woodrow PAGE. 231 92 214 255 194 33 209 46 1 105 26 206 238 289 250 185 198 222 42 16 23 140 169 187 "3 160 177 Cbe Best American Orations of To-Day Americanism-. Theodore Roosevelt. There are two or three things that American- ism means. In the first place it means that we shall give to our fellow-man, to our fellow-citizen, the same wide latitude as to his individual beliefs that we demand for ourselves ; that, so long as a man does his work as a man should, we shall not inquire, we shall not hold for or against him in civic life, his method of paying homage to his Maker. That is an important lesson for all of us to learn everywhere, but it is doubly important in our great cities, where we have a cosmopolitan population of such various origin, belonging to such different creeds, and where the problem of getting good government depends in its essence upon decent men standing together and insisting that before we take into account the ordinary political questions,we shall asapre-requisite, have decency and honesty in any party. Now for another side of Americanism ; the side 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. of the work, the strife, of the active performance of duty; one side of Americanism, one side of democracy. Our democracy means that we have no privileged class, no class that is exempt from the duties or deprived of the privileges that are implied in the words " American citizenship." Now, that principle has two sides to it, itself, for all of us would be likely to dwell continually upon one side, that all have equal rights. It is more important that we should dwell on the other side ; that is, that we will have our duties and that the rights cannot be kept unless the duties are per- formed. The law of American life — of course it is the law of life everywhere — the law of American life, peculiarly, must be the law of work ; not the law of idleness ; not the law of self-indulgence or pleasure, merely the law of work. That may seem like a trite saying. Most true sayings are trite. It is a disgrace for any American not to do his duty, but it is a double, a triple disgrace for a man of means or a man of education not to do his duty. The only work worth doing is done by those men, those women, who learn not to shrink from diffi- culties, but to face them and overcome them. So that Americanism means work, means effort, means the constant and unending strife with our conditions, which is not only the law of nature, if the race is to progress, but which is really the law of the highest happiness for us ourselves. AMERICANISM. 3 You have got to have the same interest in public affairs as in private affairs or you can not keep this country what this country should be. You have got to have more than that — you have got to have courage. I don't care how good a man is, if he is timid, his value is limited. The timid will not amount to very much in the world. I want to see a good man ready to smite with the sword. I want to see him able to hold his own in active life against the force of evil. I want to see him war effectively for righteousness. Of all the things we don't want to see is the tendency to divide into two camps ; on the one side all the nice, pleasant, refined people of high instincts, but no capacity to do work, and, on the other hand, men who have not got nice instincts at all, but who are not afraid. When you get that condition, you are preparing immeasurable disaster for the nation. You have got to com- bine decency and honesty with courage. But even that is not enough, for I don't care how brave, how honest a man is, if he is a natural-born fool he can not be a success. He has got to have the saving grace of common sense. He has got to have the right kind of heart, he has got to be upright and decent, he has got to be brave, and he has got to have common sense. He has got to have intelligence, and if he has these, then he has in him the making of a first-class American citizen. BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. The Puritan Spirit. Hon. Albert J. Beveridge. Used by permission. The Puritan spirit is constructive. The new epoch in our national life will be constructive. The Puritan spirit never criticized except to pro- pose something better. It felled forests only to erect buildings. The word of immortality in Puritanism is the master-word " create." Build, build — this is the message of Puritanism to the American people in the new epoch of our nation- al life. This new epoch is caused by our new possess- ions, the new responsibilities they place upon us and the new powers they call into action. It is unavailing to argue that the recent change wrought on the map of the world ought never to have been made. The change has occurred. The Philippines are ours. Hawaii is ours. The Pacific is the American ocean. The Canal will be ours. Look at your map, and you will see that the Gulf is, in practical effect, an American lake. Our flag floats over the Antilles and has not yet been lowered even to the half-mast ; and when the Stars and Stripes is hauled down in Cuba, let it hang awhile at half-mast, in mourning for the people of Cuba abandoned and the duty of the United States deserted. These are epo- THE PURITAN SPIRIT. 5 chal facts. The future of the world is in our hands. This is not enthusiasm ; it is geography. The constructive and righteous Puritan spirit must dominate this immense situation. We ought not to be merely imitative, any more than we ought to be corrupt. New circumstan- ces require new laws. It is not against these new laws that they are different in method, and even principle, from the old laws. New laws and new methods are not bad just because they are new. The important thing is that they shall fit the case. The Puritan was practical. If old forms and ancient principles did not apply to actual conditions, he developed principles and devised forms that did. Thus in our new epoch it is not helpful to complain of unalterable facts and declare that we cannot deal with them be- cause the old methods do not fit them. There is nothing so narrow as the egotism of precedent. Let us be specific. The Philippine people are to be governed. We can govern them best by considering them as they are. We cannot deal with them as we would with New Englanders. We must not ignore differences of location, con- dition, climate, race. With all our new domin- ions, we must deal as facts demand. A common code for the Malay Archipelago, the Hawaiian Islands and our possessions in the Gulf, and that code the method devised for our American peopled territories, would be unsatisfactory to 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. them and to us. To govern them by a method not appropriate to them, merely because we have used such methods heretofore, is not Puri- tan but Chinese reasoning. We must have the adaptability of common sense. The Puritan was the greatest maker of precedents the world has ever seen. And to make a precedent when need- ed is as noble as to follow a precedent when proper. Construction is the office of our epoch, and therefore we invoke the creative spirit of the Puritan. Our Constitution does not prohibit this. It says : " Congress shall have power to dispose of, and make all needful rules and regulations re- specting territory and other property belonging to the United States." Even if this present development were not dreamed of when the Con- stitution was framed, that ordinance of national life still authorizes it. For the Constitution grows as the people grow. Otherwise, the people would have to stop growing or the Constitution would have to be destroyed. Neither is necessary. The Constitution is not a contract of purchase and sale, or a deed, or a life insurance policy. It is an ordinance of national life. Let us thank God for a Hamilton and a Marshall. The Constitution was made for the American people, not the American people for the Constitution. The Constitution does not give immortality to the nation ; the nation gives THE PURITAN SPIRIT. 7 immortality to the Constitution. The saying that " Our Constitution follows the flag," is only partly true. The whole truth is this : Our institutions follow the flag. Our Constitution is only one of our institutions. Our Constitution did not give us our institutions ; our institutions gave us our Constitution. Our institutions follow the flag — the simplest first, later the more complex, and finally, when the way is prepared, our noblest institution, the American Constitu- tion, follows the flag. Free schools, equal laws, impartial justice, social order, and at last, when these have done their work and our wards are ready to understand and rightly use it, our Con- stitution, which is our method of government, follows the flag. " First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear." Our flag, our institutions, our Constitution. The American Consitution follows the flag when the American people deem it best ; and the American people may be trusted. The Puritan insisted upon settling his own questions in his own way, and he knew what his own questions were. He had the logic of geog- raphy, and we, his children, must have it too. Any canal which joins the American Pacific to the American Gulf must, therefore, be itself American. The Antilles are the major promise ; the Philippines and Hawaiis are the minor prom- ise •, all Central American and Isthmian canals 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. finish that syllogism. The Puritan had that independence which consists in self-dependence in his own affairs. Apply this to present facts. The Philippine question is an American ques- tion ; the American nation must work it out ; we cannot permit a concert of Powers in solving it. The Cuban question is an American question ; the American nation must work it out ; we can- not permit a concert of Powers in solving it. All Atlantic and Pacific canals and the future of Central America, so far as affected thereby, are American questions ; we cannot permit a concert of Powers in solving them. This sentiment is not anti-foreign ; it is only pro-American. Inter- national respect is based on respective national strength as well as on justice. Remember that the figure of Justice always bears a sword. Ge- ography and interest, not altruism, are the basis of fundamental national rights. All this means construction, and construction involves the probability of occasional mistakes. But this will not give us pause. The Puritan spirit was great enough to risk the making of mistakes. Progress is built on mistakes. The most men do is imperfect, but the best remains. The sovereign duty is to do. The only irre- trievable mistake is to do nothing. Let us have the courage of effort, even though we err. But the Puritan was conservative as well as constructive. He considered the things that are, THE PURITAN SPIRIT. 9 how he might safely build upon them. He was never rash. His courage was intelligent. Con- servatism and construction are what we need. Do-nothing statesmanship is fatal ; slap-dash statesmanship is fatal, too. Both are non-Puritan and un-American. Constructive conservatism, cautious daring, active moderation, a progress that is sane, these are the qualities we must have in the new epoch in our national life ; and these are the qualities which, combined, men call the Puritan spirit. In carrying out this programme of construction the stern spirit of Puritan honesty must rule. Not exploitation, but development ; not waste, but growth. Develop, build, cultivate, create. No robbing, no looting, no piracies in the name of commerce ! This epoch must go down to history as the noblest effort of Puritan construct- iveness. We can not run away from these tasks. Where the Puritan landed he remained. The Puritan spirit has never known retreat. We will not be cowards, any more than we will be robbers. Let no man fear because the Constitution gives the American people a free hand to do this giant's work. Let no man fear because our treaties and our foreign relations shall be so ar- ranged that the American people shall have a clean future in which to do this work. The motto of Americanism henceforth must be : A IO BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. clean future and a free hand. Let us trust pos- terity as much as we revere ancestry. Other- wise, we discredit both. America is to-day the young man of the nations, eager for his work, and with that work waiting to be done. We will not tie his hands. We will not bind his future. Mr. President, I propose this sentiment : " Amer- ica, the young man of the Nations, the proudest development of the Puritan spirit. Give him a clean future and a free hand, and he will make of this new epoch the beginning of mankind's golden age." Our Recent Diplomacy. Hon. John Hay. Abridged. Used by permission. There was a time when diplomacy was a science of intrigue and falsehood, of traps and mines and countermines. The word " Machia- velic " has become an adjective in our common speech, signifying fraudulent craft and guile ; but Machiavel was as honest a man as his time justi- fied or required. The King of Spain wrote to the King of France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew congratulating him upon the splendid dissimulation with which that stroke of policy had been accomplished. In the last gen- eration it was thought a remarkable advance in UR RE CENT DIPL OMA CY. II straightforward diplomacy when Prince Bismarck recognized the advantage of telling the truth, even at the risk of misleading his adversary. We have generally told squarely what we wanted, announced early in negotiation what we were willing to give, and allowed the other side to accept or reject our terms. We have been met by the representatives of other powers in the same spirit of frankness and sincerity. There is nothing like straightforwardness to beget its like. The comparative simplicity of our diplomatic methods would be a matter of necessity if it were not of choice. Secret treaties, reserved clauses, private understandings, are impossible to us. No treaty has any validity until ratified by the Senate ; many require the action of both Houses of Congress to be carried into effect. They must, therefore, be in harmony with public opinion. The Executive could not change this system, even if he should ever desire to. It must be accepted, with all its difficulties and all its advantages ; and it has been approved by the experience of a hundred years. As to the measure of success which our recent diplomacy has met with, it is difficult, if not im- possible, for me to speak. There are two impor- tant lines of human endeavor in which men are forbidden even to allude to their success — affairs of the heart and diplomatic affairs. In doing so, one not only commits a vulgarity which tran- 12 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. scends all question of taste, but makes all future success impossible. For this reason, the diploma- tic representatives of the Government must fre- quently suffer in silence the most outrageous imputations upon their patriotism, their intelli- gence, and their common honesty. To justify themselves before the public, they would some- times have to place in jeopardy the interests of the nation. They must constantly adopt for themselves the motto of the French revolutionist, " Let my name wither, rather than my country be injured." But if we are not permitted to boast of what we have done, we can at least say a word about what we have tried to do, and the principles which have guided our action. The briefest ex- pression of our rule of conduct is, perhaps, the Monroe Doctrine and the Golden Rule. With this simple chart we can hardly go far wrong. I think I may say that our sister republics to the south of us are perfectly convinced of the sincerity of our attitude. They know we desire the prosperity of each of them, and peace and harmony among them. We no more want their territory than we covet the mountains of the moon. We are grieved and distressed when there are differences among them, but even then we should never think of trying to compose any of those differences unless by the request of both parties to it. Not even our earnest desire for O UR RE CENT DIPL OMACY. 1 3 peace among them will lead us to any action which might offend their national dignity or their just sense of independence. We owe them all the consideration which we claim for ourselves. To critics in various climates who have other views of our purposes we can only wish fuller information and more quiet consciences. As to what we have tried to do — what we are still trying to do — in the general field of diplo- macy, there is no reason for doubt on the one hand or reticence on the other. President Mc- Kinley in his messages during the last four years has made the subject perfectly clear. We have striven, on the lines laid down by Washington, to cultivate friendly relations with all powers, but not to take part in the formation of groups or combinations among them. A position of complete independence is not incompatible with relations involving not friendship alone, but con- current action as well in important emergencies. We have kept always in view the fact that we are preeminently a peace-loving people ; that our normal activities are in the direction of trade and commerce ; that the vast development of our industries imperatively demands that we shall not only retain and confirm our hold on our present markets, but seek constantly, by all honorable means, to extend our commercial in- terests in every practicable direction. It is for this reason we have negotiated the treaties of 14 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. reciprocity which now await the action of the Senate ; all of them conceived in the traditional American spirit of protection to our own indus- tries, and yet mutually advantageous to ourselves and our neighbors. In the same spirit we have sought, successfully, to induce all the great powers to unite in a recognition of the general principle of equality of commercial access and opportunity in the markets of the Orient. We believe that "a fair field and no favor" is all we require ; and with less than that we can not be satisfied. If we accept the assurances we have re- ceived as honest and genuine, as I certainly do, that equality will not be denied us ; and the re- sult may safely be left to American genius and energy. We consider our interests in the Pacific Ocean as great now as those of any other power, and destined to indefinite development. We have opened our doors to the people of Hawaii ; we have accepted the responsibility of the Philip- pines which Providence imposed upon us ; we have put an end to the embarrassing con- dominium in which we were involved in Samoa, and while abandoning none of our commercial rights in the entire group, we have established our flag and our authority in Tutuila, which gives us the finest harbor in the South Seas. Next in order will come a Pacific cable, and an Isthmian canal for the use of all well-disposed O UR RE CENT DIPL OMA CY. I 5 peoples, but under exclusive ownership and American control — of both of which great enter- prises President McKinley and President Roose- velt have been the energetic and consistent champions. Sure as we are of our rights in these matters, convinced as we are of the authenticity of the vision which has led us thus far and still beckons us forward, I can yet assure you that so long as the administration of your affairs remains in hands as strong and skillful as those to which they have been and are now confided, there will be no more surrender of our rights than there will be violation of the rights of others. The President, to whom you have given your invalu- able trust and confidence, like his now immortal predecessor, is as incapable of bullying a strong power as he is of wronging a weak one. He feels and knows — for has he not tested it, in the currents of the heady fight, as well as in the toil- some work of administration ? — that the nation over whose destinies he presides has a giant's strength in the works of war, as in the works of peace. But that consciousness of strength brings with it no temptation to do injury to any power on earth, the proudest or the humblest. We frankly confess we seek the friendship of all the powers ; we want to trade with all peoples ; we are conscious of resources that will make our commerce a source of advantage to them and of 1 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. profit to ourselves. But no wantonness of strength will ever induce us to drive a hard bargain with another nation because it is weak, nor will any fear of ignoble criticism tempt us to insult or defy a great power because it is strong, or even because it is friendly. The attitude of our diplomacy may be indi- cated in a text of Scripture which Franklin — the first and greatest of our diplomats — tells us passed through his mind when he was presented at the Court of Versailles. It was a text his father used to quote to him in the old candle shop in Boston, when he was a boy : " Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand be- fore kings." Let us be diligent in our business and we shall stand — stand, you see, not crawl, nor swagger — stand, as a friend and equal, asking nothing, putting up with nothing but what is right and just, among our peers, in the great democracy of nations. The Value of Judgment. Charles F. Thwing, D.D. President of Western Reserve University. Arranged for this book by the author. Judgment is the application of the trained intellect to human lives. It is the power to see, to appreciate, and to use the truth in improving the condition of mankind. This element is, in THE VALUE OF JUDGMENT. 1 7 my thinking, the great one contributed by the college graduate to human life. This judgment embodies largeness and a proper estimate of values, the power to see units and out of units to construct unities. It embraces every scientific application of observation and every philosophi- cal application of inference. It is a judgment deliberate and deliberative, sane, large, as remote from being influenced by the idols of the market place, of the forum and of the voting booth as it is remote from the smallness of dilet- tanteism. It works with accuracy of instru- ments of precision. It moves in inductions that are no less than transcendental. It unites faith and rationalism, making faith reasonable and rationalism ethical. It extracts the truth of optimism without relieving us of the sense of responsibility and it draws out the truth of pessimism without urging on to the pessimist's fate. It is a judgment which helps one to see the principal as principal and the subor- dinate as subordinate. It is a judgment which gives contentment and inspiration, humility and the sense of strength. It is a judgment which results in adjustment, making one a citizen of the world without making one less a patriot. It is a judgment, too, which means self-under- standing and the understanding of all. It is a judgment primarily intellectual and yet it is not simply intellectual. It is a judgment in \ 1 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. which the emotions have a proper play and place and yet it is not simply emotional. It is a judgment resulting in action, yet it is some- thing more by far than mere volition. It is a judgment in which conscience has a supreme part, but it represents more than a dictate of conscience narrowly interpreted. Such a judg- ment a college graduate above other members of the community is fitted to offer and to use. Each study of a college makes an offering to its enrichment. Language gives to it discrimi- nation, freedom and amplitude, science gives to it the sense of order and a respect for law, philosophy gives to it self-confidence, breadth of vision, toleration. The old college trained men of judgment. Somecimes we ask the differ- ence between the college man of to-day and the college man of fifty years ago. The grad- uate of to-day is possessed of scholarship more ample, more varied, of manners more gracious, but it is an open question whether the old college did not train men in judgment quite as efficiently as the modern college. It, this power of judgment, is more useful than the application of beauty. It is the basis of social life and good manners. It is the soul of con- duct. It is the crown of intellectual manhood and womanhood. It is an essential element in individual character. It is the queen in civilized society. TRUSTS. 19 Trusts. Hon. J. B. Foraker. ' Abridged. Contributed by the author. TRUSTS did not originate here, as a result of the tariff, but in England and European countries where they have free trade, and where they had trusts of every character long before they became common in America, and where to-day they are more numerous than they are in the United States. In the next place, what are to-day called trusts are generally nothing more than large cor- porations engaged, as a rule, in perfectly legiti- mate business, and as such they are but a natural evolution of modern industrial conditions. They exist because there is a demand for them ; not a political, but a business demand. We have reached the point in our industrial and commercial development where we are able to supply all our home markets and have a large surplus besides. This surplus must be sold ; if not at home, then abroad. If it can not be sold it will not long be produced. If not produced, then not only must our output be curtailed, but the pay-roll must be cut down. If the pay-roll is cut down, not only the wage-worker suffers, but the home market is correspondingly restricted and the farmer suffers a consequent falling off in the 20 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA V. demand for his products. There is trouble all along the line. Considerations of this character show that we must not restrict production, but must find addi- tional markets. To find additional markets means that we must successfully compete with foreign countries. To do that we must manufacture at less cost, not only that we may undersell, but that we may have a margin for the transportation and exploitation of our goods and wares. To do this we must economize. There are many ways to do that. One is to reduce wages, and thus lessen the cost of manufacture. A poor method that, and one we are unalterably opposed to. Another way to economize is by consolidation. This has objectionable features, but they are far less objectionable than the reduction of wages. By consolidating many establishments into one you make a large capital and create a concentrated power of money, which, in the hands of unscru- pulous men, may be used to the injury of the public welfare. Because there may be this im- proper use it is appropriate to so legislate as to prevent it, just as we legislate to prevent too great a speed in the running of railroad trains, street cars, and automobiles, or to prevent the great dangers to property and life that attend the use of electric current, gunpowder and dyna- mite ; but, as no one would think of prohibiting TRUSTS. 21 or destroying railroads, or street cars, or auto- mobiles, or electric light and power plants, or gun powder or dynamite, by legislation, so too, no one who has any sense would think of so legislating as to prohibit or destroy large combinations of capital necessary for the conduct of legitimate enterprises. They have become a feature of modern business conditions the world over, and in consequence, they are a special necessity here, in the United States, where we are compelled to invade and capture foreign markets or slacken the pace at which we are going in the employment of labor and the development of our resources. We to- day have in our favor the largest balance of trade ever known since the beginning of history. We have in our vaults the largest amount of gold ever possessed by any government or any people. We stand at the head of all nations in wealth and credit. It would be strange, indeed, if with such ad- vantages there did not at the same time come some disadvantages. All great evolutions and changes are likely to work some injury as well as good. So it is with the changes now being wrought. Consolidation involves more or less of displacement and rearrangement. There must be more or less change of occupation for those who are employed, and more or less of abandon- ment of what has been in use because of the 22 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. substitution of something better ; but this is only history repeating itself. The cotton gin, the sewing machine, the typewriter, the use of steam and the electric current, all alike worked similar results ; but who would retrace these steps of progress on that account ? It has been only a few years, since to travel from the Mississippi to New York involved the use of separate lines of railroad, each under a different management, with repeated change of cars and other similar inconveniences. That was the day of small things, when we had no giant corporations with continuous lines span- ning the continent ; but who would go back to that day and that condition ? It has been one of the marvels of this marvel- ous age how, by the consolidation of one line after another, great systems of railroads have been formed and put into successful operation, and at the same time the comforts of travel and facilities for freight transportation have been constantly and voluntarily increased, while the charges therefor have been as constantly dimin- ished, until we have at the hands of these great corporations not that tyranny, oppression and deprivation of liberty, of which we hear so much, but, on the contrary, the best, the most accom- modating and the cheapest service to be found anywhere in the civilized world. There are to-day more railroads in this country THE NEW MOVEMENT IN HUMANITY. 23 than ever before. More money is invested in them than ever before. They employ more men than ever before ; they pay higher wages than ever before ; and at the same time they charge less for the services they render to the public than ever before. The net aggregate result has been one of great general benefit ; and as it is and has been with the railroads so too it is, and will be, with these great industrial combinations. They are born of our conditions. They have come to meet imperative requirements. They have been attended by many abuses. There will doubtless be many more ; but time, exper- ience, sound business judgment, and healthy public sentiment will correct most of them. There will be but little left for the law to do, and that little will not be difficult. The New Movement In Humanity. William Jewett Tucker, L L.D. President of Dartmouth College. Contributed by the author. At such a time as this who can over-estimate the joy, not only of the active, but also of the reflective life ? To live consciously, intelligently, 24 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. expectantly, with the seeing eye, the open heart, the loyal faith, — this is life indeed. We are not " Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born." The world we are leaving behind us is still vital with the divine impulse. The world which lies about us is beginning to reveal and execute the larger plans of God. No, we are not "wander- ing," nor simply under directed motion. The significance of our time is that in and through it there is a change of movement. It is as if one could now see the workings of the unseen power shifting the forces that make history, that shape the destiny of men and nations. Such, in part, is the advantage of the intellectual life in an age of transition. But deeper than the knowledge we may gain at such a time of the transfer or exchange of ruling principles and ideas is the satisfaction of watching the application of the new ideas to the new needs of the world. We are apt to place too much dependence upon men in times of need. We say that the emergency calls for the man, and must wait his coming. Not so. It is the sufficient idea which delivers and saves. It is great working ideas which make great men pos- sible," which may make them unnecessary. What man is the equivalent of the new conception THE NE W MO VEMENT IN HUMANITY. 2 5 of humanity which is now at work reconstructing society, governments, the church ? And as one extends his view, watching the application of new ideas to the needs of the world, he may see the somewhat singular phe- nomenon of the old serving under the new. We are impressed with the transfer of working power from liberty to unity. But the change is after all local, confined as yet to the few advanced peoples. There are those for whom liberty has not yet wrought her necessary work. How shall this be done ? As it has been done ? Not at all. No other nation can repeat the experience of the Republic. The days of solitary struggle for liberty are over. The nation which fights to-day for freedom fights in the fellowship of the nations which are free. The spirit of unity is abroad, everywhere supporting, guiding, cheering the be- lated spirit of liberty. But why should one at such a time content himself, in the joy of the intellectual life, with the reflective, or even, expectant attitude ? In this movement from liberty to unity, who would not surrender himself to it, and become a part of it ? The appeal of liberty was to men of action. The appeal of unity is to men of thought. The figure of the scholar on the field of battle was always inspiring, but he was seldom a leader there. In the new fields of service the scholar leads the way. The spirit of unity cannot be served as the 26 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. spirit of liberty was served, except in regard to a like consecration. The new kingdom of heaven may not suffer violence ; the violent will not take it by force. The social unity must come through patient study, wise invention, identification with men, sympathy, and sacrifice ; force will have no part in its accomplishment. The immediate future in the service of human- ity belongs to those who are best able to discern its real wants, who feel most its deepest yearn- ings, and who, above all, believe sublimely in that conception of humanity which can alone satisfy and help. The path of human progress is marked by the succession of saving principles and ideas, and each generation treads that path with certain step, as it hails its own idea, then summons its chosen ones, and bids them guard and serve it in loyalty and faith. Education for Life. Minot Judson Savage, D.D. Abridged. Contributed by the author. There is a very important distinction between education and learning. A great many people who know something think they are educated. They may be; but, because they know it, it does EDUCA TION FOR LIFE. 2J not necessarily follow that they are educated, and this no matter what they know or how much. For there is a radical distinction between education and learning. A man is educated who is trained in all his faculties and powers to the best, who has become master of himself and of his conditions. Now learning may or may not have much to do with that. Lincoln was not a learned man. He knew no language but his own. He had a very slight acquaintance with the world's literature, only a general outline knowledge of the world's history. He had never studied music. Probably he had carried mathematics only a very little way. Art — all these things were practically closed avenues to him. But would anybody to-day think of speaking of Lincoln as uneducated ? Washington was not a learned man. It has been discovered by some of his recent biograph- ers, who are anxious lest we should over-idealize him, and who are taking pains, therefore, to tell us about the real George Washington, that he did not even know how to spell. Many of his latest State papers contained errors in orthog- raphy that a small boy possibly might escape. He knew no language but his own. All the great avenues of the world's investigation, liter- rary, scientific, artistic, he had not entered. But was Washington an uneducated man ? Turn now the other side for a moment, and 28 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. see, so that the matter may become perfectly clear. A man may devote his life to the study of literature, until English literature, French, German, Greek, — all the great literatures of the world, — are familiar to him. Would he there- fore be educated ? He might be utterly help- less in dealing with the practical problems of life. He might be entirely ignorant of the great, pressing problems of this present century that every educated man is called on to deal with at every turn. Now, to carry the definition a little further, what is education ? Education is such a devel- opment of our faculties and powers as enables us to be masters wherever we are placed — masters of ourselves, masters of our condition. And we need, incidentally, to know enough to know where we are and what we are there for. There is where the knowledge comes in. Education for this century, for example, might have been utterly worthless for the seventeenth century, because the conditions, social, political, industrial, moral and religious, were entirely different then from what they are now. An educated man in the seventeenth century might be powerless to deal in any practical or effective way with the great problems of the present century. The most important thing of all for every young man at the outset — and every young woman as well, it may be, — this present century, EDUCATION FOR LIFE. 29 is that he should be so trained that, drop him wherever you will in the world, he can earn an honest living. That is the foundation, only. Yes. The foundation, however, is, in one way of looking at it, the most important part of any structure. Then another point in regard to which young men and women ought to be educated. Young men and women both ought to be taught the history of government and the peculiar principles of this government, so that they may be fitted to play their parts as citizens. For next to earning an honest living, and next to understand- ing the distinction between right and wrong, — so that, if a man chooses to do wrong he does it with his eyes open, — is what one's attitude shall be as a citizen. We do not know whether the time will come when women will vote. That is a matter too large to touch on now. But the time has come when women are a power, and a tremendous power, in the political life of the time, — a power hardly second to that which is excercised by men. One of our greatest troubles is ignorance of the past history of the world. The most dif- ficult problem the human race has ever set itself is the achievement of a government which com- bines liberty and order. We have achieved it here in this country more completely than it has ever been done before in 30 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. the history of the world. And the people who come here from other countries need to learn before they are permitted to use the power of the ballot what the peculiar conditions are here, what American citizenship means. And our young men and women — living in wealthy circles, in high social conditions — need to be reminded as to how recent this achievement is, need to be reminded what a price of agelong effort, of im- prisonment, of torture, of death, has been paid for that which they treat so lightly. No man is fit to live a human life until he ap- preciates the position he occupies as a citizen, and has made a careful study of the principles involved in this position, so that he may acquit himself as a man, who at the same time is one of the rulers of his city and of his native land. There is another phase of education that is needed at the present time. One of the princi- pal problems of this age is the relation between money and labor. In other words, a properly educated young man ought to know something of the history of the industrial problems of man- kind. One great difficulty to-day is that we are having new theories presented to us, new socie- ties formed, new organizations entered upon in every direction, in order to achieve certain things which only reveal the ignorance of the people who are interested in them. Over and over again you will find some association, club, society, EDUCATION FOR LIFE. 3 1 trying to get people to adopt some idea which has been tried and tried and exploded and exploded a dozen times in the history of the world ; only they do not know it. There are certain roads, it is said, which, if you follow them, will lead you over the fence through the pasture, then into the woods, then along a squirrel track, and up a tree. A good many of the pathways which the reformers, speculators, and enthusiasts of this modern world are trying to lead us in are of this kind. If you wish to place yourself so that you know where you stand in the pathway of the world's industrial progress, so that you can help on that which is of promise and discourage that which has no promise, then you must be educated concerning what humanity has tried to do, with its success and its failure along the industrial line. In spite of anything that an individual attempts to do, there is some great power that is holding this world in its hand : there is a Force greater than kings, greater than prime ministers, greater than philosophers or scientists, — there is a Force at work ; and humanity, under the im- pulse of that Force, is moving along certain lines in certain definite directions. The thing for us as earnest, intelligent young men and women to do is to know enough of the past and enough of the present so that we can find out which way the world, industrially, is X 32 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. going. Suppose we pit ourselves against the Force that is manifested in the universe : we only waste our effort. What we need to do is to chime in, to co-operate with this eternal Power that makes for a higher and better human state of affairs. Side with truth before it is popular to side with it. Side with God and humanity and hu- man hope just as fast as you can see what is best for humanity, what promises the most for human hope. Be fully persuaded in your own mind. Do not drift.' It is not worthy of a man to drift. It is not worthy of a man to be governed merely by social considerations, to go to church because he thinks it will help him in a business way, because it opens some doors to homes of wealth and affluence that he might not otherwise find it easy to enter. A man ought to have a convic- tion. And what is a conviction ? A conviction is something of which you have become con- vinced. It means a little thought, a little study, going over the ground and making up your mind. Most people have only opinions, notions, im- pressions, impulses. The number of people who have convictions is comparatively small. As you face the great problems, then, of the march of God, leading humanity up the ages, the great problem of the religious life of the world, the promise of the future, have some convictions about it. Take your place, bear your burden, and do your work like a man. THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. 33 The man who is educated for life, then, is one who brings his whole life up into relation to these high human ranges of thought, feeling, and action ; one who is trained so that he can master himself and his condition ; one who is learned enough to know where he is in the world's move- ment and what needs to be done next ; one who consecrates himself to the highest, so that he is not content to be anything else but the best ; one who appreciates the fact that he owes all that he possesses to this struggling humanity of which he is a part, and so stands ready to pay back to humanity in service what it has given him by inheritance. The man who, thus trained to the highest things he can conceive of, who has made the most of himself and then who is ready to give himself for the world, — he who has reached this position has found education for life. The Immortality of Good Deeds. Hon. Thomas Brackett Reed. Late Speaker of the House of Representatives. Six hundred and fifty or seventy years ago, England, which, during the following period of nearly seven centuries, has been the richest nation on the face of the globe, began to establish the two great universities which, from the banks of 34 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. the Cam and the Isis, have sent forth great scholars and priests and statesmen whose deeds have been part of the history of every land and sea. During all that long period reaching back two hundred and fifty years before it was even dreamed that this great hemisphere existed, be- fore the world knew that it was swinging in the air and rolling about the sun, kings and cardinals, nobles and great churchmen, the learned and the pious, began bestowing upon those abodes of scholars their gifts of land and money ; and they have continued their benefactions down to our time. What those universities, with all their colleges and halls teeming with scholars for six hundred years, have done for the progress of civilization and the good of man I could not be- gin to tell. Although more than six centuries of regal, princely, and pious donations have been poured into the purses of these venerable aids to learn- ing, the munificence of one American citizen to- day affords an endowment income equal to that of each university, and when Time has done his perfect work, Stephen Girard, mariner and mer- chant, may be found to have come nearer immor- tality than the long procession of kings and car- dinals, nobles and statesmen, whose power was mighty in their own days, but who are only on their way to oblivion. Unity and progress are the watchwords of THE IMMOR TALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. 3 5 Divine guidance, and every great event, or series of events, has been for the good of the race. Were this the proper time, I could show that wars — and wars ought to be banished forever from the face of the earth ; that pestilences — and the time is coming when they will be no more ; that persecutions and inquisitions — and liberty of thought is the richest pearl of life, — that all these things — wars, pestilences, and persecutions — were but helps to the unity of mankind. All things, including our own natures, bind us to- gether for deep and unrelenting purposes. It has been wisely ordained that no set of creatures of our race shall be beyond the reach of others, — so lofty that they will not fear reproach. If the lofty and the learned do not lift us up, we drag them down. But unity is not the only watch- word ; there must be progress also. Since by a law we cannot evade we are to keep together and since we are to progress, we must do it to- gether, and nobody must be left behind. This is not a matter of philosophy ; it is a matter of fact. No progress which did not lift all, ever lifted any. If we let the poison of filthy diseases percolate through the hovels of the poor, Death knocks at the palace gates. If we leave to the greater horror of ignorance any portion of our race, the consequences of ignorance strike us all, and there is no escape. We must all move, but we must all keep together. It is only when the 36 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. rear-guard comes up that the van-guard can go on. Stephen Girard must have understood this. He took under his charge the progress of those who needed his aid, knowing that if they were added to the list of good citizens, to the catalogue of moral, enterprising, and useful men, there was so much added, not to their happiness only, but to the welfare of the race to which he belonged. For his orphans the van-guard need not wait. He also understood what education was. Most men, brought up as he was on shipboard and on shore, with few books and fewer studies, if they cared for learning at all, would have had for learning an uncouth reverence, such as the savage has for his idol, a reverence for the fancied mag- nificence of the unknown. This would have led him to establish a university devoted to out-of- the-way learning far beyond his ken, or to link his name to glories to which he could not aspire. But the man who named his vessels after the great French authors of his age, and who read their works himself, knew from them, and from his own laborious and successful life, that book learning was not all of education, and so gave his orphans an entrance into a practical world with such learning as left the whole field of learning before them, if they wanted it, with power to make fortunes besides. Stephen Girard was the greatest merchant of THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. $7 his time, with the noblest ambition of them all. He was so resolute in his pursuit of wealth, and so coldly determined in all his endeavors, that he seems to have uncovered to few or to none the generous purpose of his heart. " My actions, must make my life," he said, and of his life not one moment was wasted. " Facts and things rather than words and signs " were the warp and woof of his existence. No wonder he left the injunction that this should be the teaching of those objects of his bounty into whose faces he was never to look. The vast wealth which Girard had was of itself alone evidence of greatness. Fortunes may be made and lost. Fortunes may be inherited. These things mean nothing. But the fortune which endowed Girard College was made and firmly held in a hand of eighty years. That meant greatness. But when the dead hand opens and pours the rich bloom of a preparation for life over six thousand boys in the half cen- tury which has gone and thousands in centuries to come, that means more than greatness. Mr. Girard gave more than his money. He put into his enterprise his own powerful brain, and, like the ships he sent to sea, long after his death the adventure came home laden, not with the results of his capital alone, but of his forethought and his genius. He builded for so many years that stars will be cold before his work is finished. 38 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. We envious people, who cannot be wealthy, avenge ourselves by thinking and proclaiming that the pursuit of wealth is sordid and stifles the nobler sentiments of the soul. Whether this be so or not, if whoever makes to grow two blades of grass where but one grew before, is a benefactor of his race ; he also is a benefactor who makes two ships sail the sea where but one encountered its storms before. However sordid the owner may be, this is a benefit of which he cannot deprive the world. That men who have achieved great riches are not always shut out by their riches from the nobler emotions, Stephen Girard was himself a most illustrious example. A hundred years ago Philadelphia was under the black horror of a plague. So terrible was the fear that fell upon the city, that the tenderest of domestic ties — the love of husband and wife and of parents for children — seemed obliterated. Even gold lost its power in the presence of impending death. There was no refuge even in the hospital, which, reeking with disease, was a hell out of which there was no redemption. Neither money nor affection could buy service. " Fear was on every Girard was then in the prime of life, forty-two years old, in health and strength, already rich, and with a future as secure as ever falls to human lot. Of his own accord, as a volunteer, THE IMMORTALITY OF GOOD DEEDS. 39 he took charge of the interior of the deadly hos- pital, and for two long and weary months stood face to face with Death. A poet has sung of what makes the little song linger in our hearts forever while epics perish and tragedies pass out of sight. Why this is so we shall never know by reason alone. Deep down in the human heart there is a tenderness for self-sacrifice which makes it seem loftier than the love of glory, and reveals the possibility of the eternal soul. Wars and sieges pass away and great intellec- tual efforts cease to stir our hearts, but the man who sacrifices himself for his fellows lives forever. We forget the war in which was the siege of Zutphen, and almost the city itself, but we shall never forget the death of Sir Philip Sidney. Scholars alone read the work of his life, but all mankind honors him in the story of his death. The great war of the Crimea, in our own day, with its generals and marshals, and its bands of storming soldiery, has almost passed from our memories, but the time will never come when the charge of Balaklava will cease to stir the heart or pass from story or from song. It hap- pened to Stephen Girard, manner and merchant, seeking wealth and finding it, whose ships traveled every sea, whose intellect penetrated a hundred years into the future, to light up his life by a deed more noble than the dying courtesy of Sid- 40 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. ney and braver than the charge of the Six Hun- dred, for he walked under his own orders day by day and week by week, shoulder to shoulder with death, and was not afraid. How fit, indeed, it is, that amidst the temples of learning which are the tribute to his intellect, should stand the tablet which is the tribute to his heart. Surely, if the immortal dead, serene with the wisdom of eternity, — are not above all joy and pride, he must feel a thrill to know that no mariner or merchant ever sent forth a venture upon unknown seas which came back with richer cargoes or in statelier ships. The New Patriotism. Richard Watson Gilder. What seems to be the most needed patriotism in our day and country ? In the first place, we ought as a nation to cultivate peace with all other nations. This was good patriotism in the days of George Washington ; it ought to be good patriotism in our day. The new patriotism, therefore, aims at a condition of peace with all the world ; it believes that Christianity is mocked by the spectacle of Christian nations in arms against each other. It believes that if America is ever to lift the sword against a foreign foe, it must not only be in a righteous cause, but with THE NEW PATRIOTISM. 4 1 a pure heart ; that he who takes up his sword to enforce his will upon another must see that his own will is right and that his own hands are clean. But the new patriotism has other duties than those of armed conflict ; duties less splendid, but no less onerous, and requiring no less bravery; requiring bravery of a rarer order than that which shone upon a hundred battlefields of our Civil War. The roll of cowards among those who wore either the blue or gray is insignificant indeed. And there was scarcely a single act of treachery among the combatants on either side. Yes, most men will march for country and honor's sake straight into the jaws of death. But how many men in our day, when put to the test of civic courage, have we beheld turn cowards and recreants? How many political careers have we seen blighted by conscienceless compromise or base surrender? We have also seen the tremendous power of wise and disinterested effort in the domain of public affairs. We have seen brave men do nota- ble deeds for the betterment of our country and our communities. But there must be more such men, or the evil forces will, for a while, at least, triumph in a republic, whose fortunate destiny must not be weakly taken for granted by those who passionately love their country. We must have more leaders, and we must have more fol- 42 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. lowers of the right. Men who will resist civic temptation, who will refuse to take the easy path of compliance, and who will fight for honesty and purity in public affairs. The Union Soldier. Hon. John M. Thurston. Sometimes in passing along the street, I meet a man who, in the left lapel of his coat, wears a little, plain, modest, unassuming brass button. The coat is often old and rusty ; the face above it seamed and furrowed by the toil and suffering of adverse years, perhaps beside it hangs an empty sleeve, and below it stumps a wooden peg. But when I meet the man who wears that button, I doff my hat and stand uncovered in his presence — yea ! to me the very dust his weary foot has pressed is holy ground, for I know that man, in the dark hour of the Nation's peril, bared his breast to the fire of battle to keep the flag of our country in the Union sky. May be at Donaldson he reached the inner trench ; at Shiloh held the broken line ; at Chatta- nooga climbed the flame-swept hill or stormed the clouds on Lookout Heights. He was not born or bred to soldier life. His country's summons called him from the plow, the forge, the bench, the loom, the mine, the store, the office, the THE UNION SOLDIER. 43 college, the sanctuary. He did not fight for greed of gold, to find adventure, or to win re- nown. He loved the peace of quiet ways, and yet he broke the clasp of clinging arms, turned from the witching glances of tender eyes, left good-bye kisses upon tiny lips to look death in the face on desperate fields. And when the war was over he quietly took up the broken threads of love and life as best he could, a better citizen for having been so good a soldier. What mighty men have worn this same bronze button ! Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Logan, and a hundred more, whose names are written on the title page of deathless fame. Their glor- ious victories are known to men ; the history of their country gives them voice ; the white light of publicity illuminates them for every eye. But there are thousands who, in humbler way, no less deserve applause. How many knight- liest acts of chivalry were never seen beyond the line or heard above the roar of battle. I know t a man wearing the button whose modest lips will not unclose upon his own heroic deeds. Let me the story tell of one. On the morning of July 1, 1862, 5,000 confederate cavalry advanced upon Boonville, Mo., then held by Col. Philip Sheridan with less than a thousand troopers. The federal line, being strongly intrenched, was able to hold its ground against the greatly superior force. 44 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. But Sheridan, fearful of being outflanked, direct- ed a young captain to take a portion of two com- panies, make a rapid detour, charge the enemy in the rear, and throw its line into confusion, thus making possible a simultaneous and successful attack in front. Sheridan said to him : " I expect of your command the quick and desperate work usually imposed upon a forlorn hope ; " at the same time bidding him what promised to be an eternal farewell. Ninety-two men rode calmly out, knowing the supreme moment of their lives had come. What was in their hearts during that silent ride ? What lights and shadows flashed across the cameras of their souls ? To one pale boy there came the vision of a quaint old house, a white haired woman on her knees in prayer, an open Bible by her side, God's peace upon her face. Another memory held a cottage, half embedded in the shade of sheltering trees and clinging vines ; stray^bits of sunshine round the open door ; within, a fair young mother, crooning lullabys above a baby's crib. And one old grizzled hero seemed to see, in mists of un- shed tears, a brush-grown corner of the farm- yard fence, and through the rails a blended pic- ture of faded calico and golden curls and laugh- ing eyes. And then the little column halted on a bit of rising ground and faced — destiny ! Before them was a brigade of cavalry, 3,000 strong. That way lay death. Behind them THE UNION SOLDIER. 45 were the open fields, the sheltering woods, safe- ty and — dishonor. Just for a moment every cheek was blanched. A robin sang unheeded from a neighboring limb"; clusters of purple daisies bloomed unseen upon the grassy slope ; the sweet fresh breath of early summer filled the air, unfelt by all. They only saw the dear old flag of union overhead ; they only knew that foes of country blocked the road in front ; they only heard the ringing voice of their gallant leader ordering the charge, and with a yell the little troop swept om " Flashed every sabre bare, Flashed as they turned in air, Charging an army, While all the world wondered.*' So sudden and unexpected was the attack, so desperate and irresistible the charge, that this handful of men cut their way through the heart of a whole brigade. Then, in prompt obedience to the calm command of their captain, they wheeled, re-formed and charged again. At this opportune moment, while the confederates were in confusion, Sheridan's whole line dashed for- ward with mighty cheers and the day was won. That night forty of the ninety-two kept their eternal bivouac on the field of battle, their white faces kissed by the silent stars. The captain was left for dead, but thank God ! he still lives ; lives 46 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. to wear the button of a people's love. For the man whose sublime courage and daring leader- ship gave victory and a first star to Phil Sheri- dan, was Russel A. Alger of Detroit. God bless the men who wore the button ! They pinned the stars of Union in the azure of our flag with bayonets, and made atonement for a nation's sin in blood. They took the negro from the auction block and at the altar of emancipation crowned him — citizen. They supplemented "Yankee Doodle " with " Glory Hallelujah," and Yorktown with Appomattox. Their powder woke the morn of universal freedom and made the name " American " first in all the earth. To us their memory is an inspiration and to the future it is hope. Men : Made, Self-made, and Unmade. Abridged. E. G. Robinson, D.D., LL.D. Late President of Brown University. The highest ideal of manhood that the world has yet seen now hovers before the minds of the Christian nations. But, alas ! how extremely small the number of those who ever approximate a realization of it. Geniuses may shoot above the common level, but they do not fill out the ideals of men. The ideal man is he in whom MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 4/ every endowment of his being is developed in harmony with every other, and each to the highest degree of which all are capable. The one great aim of all education is, of course, to secure the highest style of men. In strict accord with a people's conception of the highest style will always be its methods of education ; and the nearer its approach to a realization of its conception, the more exact and philosophical will be its educational methods. The greatest glory of any nation, country, or time, is its great men, — men who are great, not alone by great talents or by deeds of great daring, but by great excellence of character and by nobleness of purposes and acts. To multiply for itself such men is the great aim of a people's system of education. The most elaborate training, however, quite too often fails to produce first-rate men. Not unfrequently persons of high mental endow- ments leave our educational institutions crowned with academic honors only to drop at once into the ranks of the commonplace and the forgotten. Criticisms of our educational methods abound, and bitter complaints are heard on every hand that they fail to secure to those subjected to them the efficiency and power of leadership which the educated are rightfully expected to possess. Not a few of the liberally educated, failing in what they have undertaken in life, are 48 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. sneered at as the legitimate product of the schools and colleges. They have all of the form, but none of the power, of well-trained men. They are made men, who have been spoiled in the making. And what is it that has spoiled them? The cause of failure doubtless sometimes lies in poor teaching. Some teachers have a marvel- lous faculty for repressing rather than educing the powers of their pupils. They treat their pupils as the muleteer treats his mules : most approving them when they are most passive and docile in receiving and carrying their packs. They seem to suppose that the true function of the teacher is to impart rather than to draw out and stimulate to acquisition. Languages, especi- ally the ancient classics, are too often taught as anatomists sometimes teach physiology, solely by dissection. The languages are treated as if they were literally, what they often are called, dead languages ; as if, having long ago served their purpose as living tongues, their only use to us now is as illustrations of grammatical princi- ples ; and when they have served this purpose to the student, he is left to feel that, like the student of physiology with the cadaver when he is through with it, nothing else is to be done but to shovel the remains out of sight. Exces- sive doses of grammar have destroyed the appe- tite of many a student for the classics, so that MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 49 he has dropped them from the day he ceased to study them in college. Another source of irreparable mischief in teaching is in the careless and slovenly work of men who make of teaching a temporary convenience for earning means to take them on to something else, — making it a mere stepping-stone to other and more congenial work. Indifferent to everything but their stipend, they glide in the most perfunctory way through all their offices as teachers, killing by their very indifference every springing germ of interest in their scholars. And I might add that others still, faultless in all the letter and minutiae of scholarship, and with the best of intentions as teachers, but naturally inert and self-contained, can awaken no enthusiasm in others, and succeed only in imparting of their own inertia to their pupils. But it is not alone through faults of teachers that so many of the educated, so many of the graduates of our colleges, find themselves un- fitted for success in life. Still more frequently the fault has been entirely with the educated themselves. And it often begins at the outset of student life. The road of the nobodies is already entered on when a student is willing to let other people do his hard work for him. If he lets his fellow-students work out his difficult prob- lems for him, and unravel for him the mysteries of obscure passages in his translations, it will be easy 50 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA K to tell what his education will do for him. If he be content to submit himself in mere passivity to the carving hand of the professor, making no effort to acquire by his own exertions, it will not be difficult to foretell what he will have amounted to when professors shall have done with him. Docility is a prime quality in every good student ; but docility and passivity are not identical. Receptivity is good ; but receptivity with power to assimilate what is acquired, and multiply it, is far better. The pupil may present himself to the professor like a block of marble to be chiselled into form, or he may be like a tree which pruning and culture shall quicken into a healthier and more vigorous growth. Outward stimulus is all in vain without the inward energy that reacts and receives and assimilates. A stick may be whittled into the form of a man, but changed as it may be in form it will still be a stick of a man. Alas, that so many of the liber- ally educated prove to be only half-animate ! With the utmost efforts to promote individual development, it is marvellous how almost uni- formly the individual is merged in the mass, — how almost identical are the mental, social, and moral stamps put upon all the graduates of any single institution of learning. Any one of its graduates will show you the general character- istics of all. All have been poured into the same mould, and the native force of some of them MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 5 I must have been sadly compressed. Carefully observing professors in our professional schools easily distinguish between the differing types of mind and character coming from the different colleges, — can almost determine with accuracy the college a student has come from so soon as they have had fair opportunity to gauge him. College professors, after due experience, can even make some very happy guesses as to which of the great preparatory schools a boy has come from when they have had opportunity to taste the quality of his preparation. Even different law schools put a not undiscernible difference of impress on their graduates. Theological schools put a most conspicuous difference of stamps on theirs. The stamps of those of the same com- munion differ widely. It was not therefore a wholly ungrounded caricature once made of a theological school, representing it as a grist-mill into whose hopper men of the most diverse stat- ure, weight, and dress were being dropped while from the farther side of the mill along procession of clericals was emerging, every one of whom was precisely like every other in height, and weight, and carriage, and apparel. To cramp a man into likeness to other men, is to cripple him, if not to unfit him, for any efficient service in this world. Teachers, like rescuers of the freezing, must force their pupils into self-exertion if they would save them. 52 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. Young men seeking an education are pretty sure to end in becoming mere made men when their ambition rests content with doing simply the tasks assigned for the recitation-room. Of course, the tasks should command the first atten- tion. They are assigned for the best of reasons. If needed to master them, they should absorb one's whole attention. But the tasks are not for their own sakes. Made an end in themselves, they are sure to dwarf the doer of them into an intellectual puppet or a parrot. Multitudes of men are scattered throughout our country who were admirable at their tasks in every stage of their education and in every department of knowledge, — who even went forth as honor men from the halls of learning, — but who in all effect- ive work in human society are hopeless failures You find them at the bar and you find them in the pulpit ; professors' chairs are not without them ; and they are not wanting in the halls of legislation, — admirably carved semblances of cul- tivated manhood, having all the shape and comeliness but not a whit of the living power of well-trained intellects. For them the work of the college and the schools was its own end ; when it was finished they had " attained." They rested on their laurels. Their education, so far from fitting, simply unfitted them for the work which a waiting world had a right to expect from them. MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 53 But whatever the process and whatever the product in the making of men, one of the saddest aspects of human life is the number of the well- made who finally unmake themselves, and end their days in ultimate ruin of both mind and character. But let it ever be remembered that personal ruin comes neither by fate nor by fiat. Not even omnipotence can destroy rightly built character. No lightning bolt can shatter it, no flood drown it, no fire consume it. It is inde- structible, except by him who has formed it. Only the man himself can destroy himself. Per- sonal ruin, moreover, comes not as sudden catas- trophe, but as the result of causes, hidden it may be, but long at work. Human wrecks are not wrought in an hour. It was not a sudden and new-born impulse that prompted Lord Bacon to offer his smooth palm for the bribe that has blackened his name forever. The cinders and molten lava of the volcano are not born of a single day's burning. Evil thoughts are sure in due time to breed evil deeds. Man is social ; the social prompts to the convivial ; the convivial adds to its festivities the cup of exhilaration. The exhilaration may be a very little flame at the first, but lighted often it speedily blazes into an all-consuming fire which yielded to in youth, dominates man- hood, trampling all goodness and beauty into the mire. 54 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. But it is not alone a collapse of character that is to be guarded against : a lesser, but still a deplorable calamity, not unfrequently befall- ing educated men in our time, is a species of intellectual bankruptcy, — a bankruptcy in some cases foreseen and foretold, as when one seeks to prepare himself for a profession by the short- est cut possible and simply to gain a livelihood ; in other cases, a bankruptcy unexpected and utterly disappointing, as when one proposing to prepare himself for a profession resolves to enter on the practice of it only after the com- pletest preparation that the highest industry can secure. As a student he outstrips his fel- lows, acquiring with rapidity and retaining with ease. His literary and scientific studies are finished with applause. His professional train- ing is passed through with great credit and the functions of the chosen profession are assumed. To these functions is given an undivided atten- tion. They absorb the whole man. The stud- ies that engrossed him in the academy and roused him to enthusiasm in college have dropped out of mind. College books that were not sold when finished are thrown aside as lumber. The imago of the insect is not more removed from its larva state than this profes- sional man from his school days. The connec- tion between the two periods is not that of continuous and consciously organic growth, but MEN: MADE, SELF-MADE, AND UNMADE. 55 of an unconscious metamorphosis. The stud- ent has been lost in the lawyer, the doctor, the clergyman, the editor, the engineer. Here and there one rises to the full, rounded distinction of both scholar and professional man, a few- attain to eminence as masters of the technicali- ties of their professions ; but a countless number sink into mere professional hacks, — prostituting their professions into mere livelihood trades, — of whom the great public soon wearies and refuses to take account. The wealth of learning which they began to accumulate with such fair promise, husbanded and added to, would have enriched life and increased their power; but they are intellectual bankrupts. And yet even to these the training of the school-room and of the college has been invalu- able. They gave a mental discipline and useful knowledge which could have been obtained in no other way. Even the professional hack is a better hack for having been well trained in intellect. Without due mental discipline neither the principles involved in the professions could have been properly understood, nor the func- tions required have been intelligently per- formed ; and without the drudgery of the schools the requisite mental discipline would have remained unattainable ; and among all the studies yet open to man none seem so com- pletely capable of fulfilling at once the double 56 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. office of discipline and of subsequent usefulness in life as those languages on which the existing literatures of the world more or less directly rest, and those sciences out of which are daily springing the discoveries and inventions that are fast changing the face of the whole earth, and serving as vehicles of the thoughts that are to transform into neighbors and brothers all the races of mankind. The Battle of Santiago. Hon. Henry Cabot Lodge. From " The War with Spain." Copyright, 1899, by Harper & Brothers. Used by permission of the publishers. The American people will always remember that hot summer morning and the anxiety that overspread the land. They will always see the American ships rolling lazily on the long seas, and the sailors just going to Sunday inspection. Then comes the long, thin trail of smoke drawing nearer the harbor's mouth. The ships see it, and we can hear the cheers ring out, for the enemy is coming, and the American sailor re- joices mightily to know that the battle is set. There is no need of signals, no need of orders. The patient, long-watching admiral has given direction for every chance that may befall. Every ship is in place ; every ship rushes forward, closing in upon the enemy, fiercely pouring shells THE BATTLE OF SANTIAGO. S7 from broadside and turret. There is the Glouces- ter firing her little shots at the great cruisers, and then driving down to grapple with the tor- pedo boats. There are the Spanish ships, already mortally hurt, running along the shore, shattered and breaking under the fire of the Indiana, the Iowa, and the Texas ; there is the Brooklyn rac- ing by, to head the fugitives, and the Oregon dealing death-strokes as she rushes forward, forging to the front, and leaving her mark every- where as she goes. On they go, driving through the water, firing steadily and ever getting closer, and presently the Spanish cruisers, helpless, burn- ing, twisted wrecks of iron, are piled along the shore, and we see the younger officers and the men of their victorious ships periling their lives to save their beaten enemies. We see Wain- wright on the Gloucester as eager in rescue as he was swift in fight. We hear Philip cry out, " Don't cheer. The poor devils are dying." We watch Evans as he hands back the sword to the wounded Eulate, and then writes in his report : " I cannot express my admiration for my mag- nificent crew. So long as the enemy showed his flag, they fought like American seamen ; but when the flag came down, they were as gentle and tender as American women." They all stand out to us, these gallant figures, from admiral to sea- men, with an intense human interest, fearless in fight, brave and merciful in the hour of victory. 5 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. Work and Play. Hamilton Wright Mabie. From " Essays on Nature and Culture." Copyright, 1896, by Dodd, Mead and Co. Used by permission. NOTHING in natural processes is more sugges- tive than the apparent ease with which the greatest power is put forth and the most diverse and difficult tasks accomplished. Nature never rests, and yet is always in repose ; she never ceases to work, and yet always seems to be at play. The expenditure of power involved in the change from winter to summer is incalculable ; but the change is accomplished so quietly and by such delicate gradations that it is impossible to associate the idea of toil with it. There is no strenuous putting forth of force ; there is rather the overflow of a fathomless life. The tide of life runs to the summit of the remotest mountain which nourishes a bit of verdure, as easily as the water sweeps in from the sea when the tide turns and the creeks and inlets begin to sing once more in the music of returning waves. The secret of this silent, invisible, easy play of force and accomplishment of ends lies, perhaps in perfect adaptation of instrument to task, in absence of friction, in complete harmony between power, methods, and ultimate aims. The entire harmony which characterizes Na- ture in her unconsciousness is not possible to , WORK AND PLA Y. 59 man in his consciousness ; but the conditions under which the life of Nature manifests itself and bears its manifold fruits is rich in hints and suggestions. At no point is the analogy between that life, in certain of its aspects, and the life of man, more striking and helpful. The secret of heroic work is harmony between man and his task ; an adjustment so complete that the putting forth of strength in a specific direction becomes as natural and instinctive as breathing or walking. So long as we toil, we are slaves, and the labor of the slave is always stamped with a certain inferiority. Toil involves drudgery, and is mechanical and perfunctory ; it is devoid of personality, beauty, or power; it implies a dominating force accomplishing its ends by sheer authority, and a free human spirit giv- ing its vitality full play. When toil becomes work, drudgery gives place to a conscientious and often cheerful expenditure of power and surrender of ease. The worker is free, and puts his heart and soul into his work with the joy of one who serves his own high aims rather than bends unwillingly to an authority stronger than his own personality. In its subordination of the minor to the major motives of living, its quiet substitu- tion of the lower for the higher pleasures, its dis- cipline, and its self-sacrifice, work, instead of being the traditional curse of the race, is its blessing, its happiness, and its reward. 60 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. The heroic workers of the world are the men whose tasks are most enviable ; they are lifted above themselves by absorption in great under- takings ; they are engrossed in occupations which not only ease the pain of living by steadily call- ing forth the highest in the worker, but which educate, liberate, and enrich even while they exhaust. As work is higher than toil, so is play higher than work. Toil rests on submission, work on freedom, play on spontaneity and self-unconsci- ousness. The toiler is a slave, the worker a free man, the man who plays an artist. When work rises into the sphere of creativeness, takes on new forms, breathes the vital spirit, becomes distinctive and individual, it is transformed into art. It is no longer accomplished under the law of necess- ity ; it has become free. It is no longer full of strain and pain ; it is joyful ; it is the natural overflow of a rich and powerful nature. To turn work into play is, therefore, the high- est achievement of active life ; and to rise, in any department of work, from apprenticeship and artisanship to the ease and freedom of the artist, is to attain the most genuine and satisfying suc- cess which a life of activity offers. The pleasure of play is not the absence of effort, but the consciousness of freedom ; not escape from weariness, but the feeling that one has put himself into the game of life masterfully. THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 6 1 When the joy of working takes possession of a man, he ceases to take account of times and days and places ; he is always at work, for work is to him the normal form of activity. He not only loves his task, — the man in the working stage often loves his work, — but he individualizes it, handles it freely, freshly, originally. He makes his own times, develops his own methods, fashions his own tools. The work which he does with his hands is not a thing outside of his con- sciousness and apart from his experience ; it is a part of himself, for it is the expression of his own soul. The March of the Constitution. Andrew S. Draper, LL.D. President of University of Illinois. Contributed by the author. A FREE Constitution, written or unwritten, can and must be progressive. The Constitution of the United States has not been written in completed form ; it never will be. The Constitution itself has not been perfected ; it never will be. The resources of language can describe the Constitution but inadequately. It is infinitely more than our fathers were able to agree upon, or to anticipate and formulate in a written paper a hundred years ago. It is all that we inherited from the mother country after all the heroisms and triumphs in 62 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. the evolution of a race, and in the building of a free nation through a thousand years. It covers a full knowledge of the accomplishments and the failures of all other governments in all ages and in all the world. It is the physical energy and the intellectual resourcefulness which have come from the ad- mixture of blood and of civilizations. It is the country we now possess, crossed by the natural thoroughfares of the nations, with endless shores and uncounted harbors washed by the waters of both oceans. It is our mountains and plains, our great lakes and majestic rivers, our diversified climate, our corn lands and cotton lands and wheat lands, our inexhaustible mines, and the herds upon our ten thousand hills. It is our great factories in every town, our magnificent steel highways threading our valleys, tunnelling or scaling our mountains and making the maps of our prairie states black with their frequency. It is our genius in invention and our skill and courage in engineering. It is our com- mon respect for labor, and the accounts in our savings banks. It is the unparalleled opportuni- ties, in every direction, which are offered to recti- tude and to endeavor, no matter how humble the roof under which they were born. It is our pub- lishing houses, our newspaper press, our libraries and museums and art galleries. It is the spirit of the American home, the THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 63 equality of right in it, the exalted position of women, and the dominating influence of the mother in the household. It is our free public school at every door, and our centers of the higher learning pushing the scientific advance in every possible direction and promoting every conceivable phase of intellectual activity. It is our churches and our Sunday schools, the complete toleration of religious opinion, and the common respect for religious worship. It is our private benevolences, and our steadily improving treatment of the trouble- some and dependent classes. It is the individualism and the balanced sense of the nation, the love of freedom which is so strong that no one is afraid of losing the object of it. It is the regard for laws which are funda- mental, the indifference to laws which are seen to be only advisory, the jealousy of laws which tend to favor special interests or seem to set at naught the common thought. The old Pilgrim at Plymouth, the minute-man at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge were in our Constitution at the beginning ; the citizen soldier of the Civil War, the Oregon upon her fifteen thousand miles journey around the Horn and then at once the decisive factor in the most sanguinary naval battle in all history, the college boys and farmers' lads and millionaires' sons fighting their way together up the flame-swept 64 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. hill at San Juan, the veterans of the Ninth Regu- lar Infantry pushing their way through the Au- gust heat and the sand and filth of China, and battering down the gates of the Forbidden City to relieve the American legation from the horrors of Pekin, are all in the Constitution now. The spirit of the nation, that spirit which moved out of the old world into the new, that chastened and tolerant, that sober and yet ag- gressive spirit which separated from an established Church, and so learned how to separate from an autocratic State ; which centered at Plymouth Rock, and then tempered the heroic but intoler- ant sentiment at the Bay ; which moved out into the valley of the Connecticut, and then crossed the Berkshires into the valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk and the Susquehanna ; which crossed the Alleghanies and the Blue Ridge ; which took possession of the prairies with con- fident and resolute step ; which scaled the Rockies and claimed the Pacific shores ; which passed through the Golden Gate and into the beyond. This spirit is the very life of the Con- stitution. The spirit that has fattened for a hun- dred years upon what it has fed, that chafes more and more at the long continued exactions of the kings, and that would extend free government, its helps and its opportunities, is in the Constitu- tion in yet larger measure now than in the days of our fathers. THE MARCH OF THE CONSTITUTION. 65 More, far more, than any one can tell, is in the American Constitution. May the God of nations give us larger reverence for the inspirations that are in our history, whether inscribed in the law books of state, or written upon the hearts of men and women. May the written law be construed in the light of the traditions, the heroisms, the opportunities, and the aspirations of the unwrit- ten. May the Supreme Court never lack in dis- cretion, or in courage. And under its guidance may the Constitution march on. May it advance without greed and, if possible, without war. May it go forward with the consciousness of moral right to widen the area of civilization and enlarge the liberty of the human race. Never fear. Vastness may prove to be the ark of our safety. May all the fundamental principles of human liberty be upheld and, within the lines which they have laid down, may the Constitution and the flag of the great Republic march on. " Flag of the heroes who left us their glory, Borne through their battle-fields thunder and flame, Blazoned in song and illumined in story- Wave o'er us all who inherit their fame." " Light of our firmament, guide of our nation, Pride of her children, and honored afar, Let the wide beams of thy full constellation Scatter each cloud that would darken a star." " With the red for love, and the white for law, And the blue for the hope that our fathers saw." 66 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. Education and the Self-Made Man. Grover Cleveland. Used by permission. Manifestly among the tools to be used in the construction of the best quality of our self- made men, education is vitally important. Its share of the work consists in so strengthening and fashioning the grain and fibre of the material as to develop its greatest power and fit it for the most extensive and varied service. This process cannot be neglected with the expectation of sat- isfactory results, and its thoroughness and effect- iveness must depend upon the excellence and condition of the tool employed, and the skill and care with which it is used. Happily we are able to recognize conditions which tend to an im- proved appreciation of collegiate advantages. The extension of our school system ought to stimulate the desire of pupils to enjoy larger opportunities. The old superstition concerning the close relationship between the greatness of the self-made man and meager educational advan- tages is fast disappearing, and parents are more generally convinced- that the time and money involved in a college course for their children are not wasted. In these circumstances it seems to me there is no sufficient reason why so many of our young men fail of enrollment among our EDUCA 770 N AND THE SELF-MADE MAN. 6? college students. I am afraid the fault is largely theirs and that they do not fully realize the great benefit they, themselves, would derive from a liberal education, and even without this, the obligation resting upon them to do their share toward furnishing to our country the kind of self-made men it so much needs, ought to incite them to enter upon this work in the surest and most effective manner. We are considering the importance of a liberal education from a point of view that excludes the idea that such an education is only useful as a preparation for a professional career. In my opinion we could as reasonably claim that our professional ranks are more than sufficiently recruited, as to say that educated men are out of place in other walks of life. We need the right kind of educated, self- made men in our business circles, on our farms and everywhere. We need them for the good they can do by raising the standard of intelli- gence within their field of influence. We need them for the evidence they may furnish that education is a profitable factor in all vocations and in all the ordinary affairs of a community, and we especially and sorely need such men, abundantly distributed among our people, for what they may do in patriotically steadying the current of political sentiment and action. I hardly need say that this means something more than mere book learning and that it in- 68 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. eludes the practical knowledge and information concerning men and things which so easily accompanies the knowledge of books, as well as the mental discipline and orderly habit of thought which systematic study begets. Ob- viously this definition excludes that measure of book learning barely sufficient to claim a diploma and used for no better purpose than to decorate the ease of wealth and ornament of an inactive existence. Sordidness is not confined to those whose only success consists in riches. There is a sordidness of education more censurable though perhaps less exposed. There are those whose success is made up of a vast accumulation of education who are as miserly in its possession as the most avari- cious among the rich. No one is j ustified in hoard- ing education solely for his selfish gratification. To keep it entirely in close custody, to take a greedy pleasure in its contemplation and to utilize it only as a means of personal unshared enjoyment, is more unpardonable than the clutch of the miser upon his money ; for he in its accumulation has. been subjected to the cramping and narrow- ing influences of avarice, while he who hoards education does violence to the broad and liberal influences which accompany its acquisition. The obligations of wealth and the obligations of education are co-operative and equally binding. The discharge of these obligations involves re- THE SOLDIER BOY. 69 straint as well as activity. The rich man should restrain himself from harboring or having the appearance of harboring any feeling of purse- proud superiority over his less wealthy fellows. Without such restraint the distance is lengthened between him and those whom by contact and association, he might benefit. It is thus, too, that envious discontent and hatred of the rich is engendered and perpetuated. So, also, the man of education should carefully keep himself from the indulgence or seeming indulgence in a super- cilious loftiness toward his fellow-citizens. Otherwise he will see those whom he might im- prove and elevate, if within his reach, standing aloof and answering every invitation to a nearer approach with mockery and derision. The be- nign influence of both the educated and the rich is among and with their fellow-men of less educa- tion and less wealth ; and real and hearty fellow- ship is absolutely needful to the success of their mission. The Soldier Boy. Hon. John Davis Long. MEMORIAL Day will hereafter gather around it not only the love and tears and pride of the generations of the people, but more and more, in its inner circle of tenderness, the linking mem- 70 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. ories of every comrade, so long as one survives. As the dawn ushers it in, tinged already with exquisite flush of hastening June, and sweet with the bursting fragrance of her roses, the wheels of time will each year roll back, and lo ! John Andrew is at the State-house, inspiring Massachusetts with the throbbing of his own great heart ; Abraham Lincoln, wise and patient and honest and tender and true, is at the nation's helm ; the North is one broad blaze ; the boys in blue are marching to the front ; the fife and drum are on every breeze ; the very air is patrio- tism ; Phil Sheridan, twenty miles away, dashes back to turn defeat to victory ; Farragut, lashed to the mast-head, is steaming into Mobile Har- bor ; Hooker is above the clouds, — ay, now in- deed forever above the clouds ; Sherman marches through Georgia to the sea; Grant has throttled Lee with the grip that never lets go; Richmond falls ; the armies of the Republic pass in that last great review at Washington ; Custer's plume is there, but Kearney's saddle is empty ; and, now again, our veterans come marching home to receive the welcome of a grateful people, and to stack in Doric Hall the tattered flags which Massachusetts forever hence shall wear above her heart. In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspiration to our children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of our patriots with flowers, THE SOLDIER BOY. J I to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it were but yesterday you recall him. He had but turned twenty. The exquisite tint of youthful health was on his cheek. His pure heart shone from frank, outspeaking eyes. His fair hair clustered from beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his home at this season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mothers and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth. . . . And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward. You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters to his mother, written as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him the routine of service, the life of camp and march ! How eager the wish to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause ! What pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or its strap upon his shoulder ! . . . They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby J 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO- DA Y. and grew gaunt and haggard with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. . . . He tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached the line ; and, with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught and took him back to captivity. He was exchanged at last ; and you remember, when he came home on a short furlough, how manly and war-worn he had grown. But he soon returned to the ranks and to the welcome of his comrades. They recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the rifle-pits around Petersburg you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion of the upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis over whom the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village churchyard under A MANLY FELLOW. 73 the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin, nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. Do you ask who he was? He was in every regiment and every company. He went out from every village. He sleeps in every burying-ground. Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but there is none that is his peer. . A Manly Fellow. Cyrus Northrop, LL.D. President of the University of Minnesota. If there is any expression which, when applied to a young man brings honor to him, it is the expression, " A manly fellow." It means so very much that is good, and the absence of so very much that is bad. " He is a manly fellow. He dares do all that may become a man ; who dares do more is none." Both in what he dare do and what he dare not do, he is manly. For you will notice that it is quite as manly not to dare to do some things as it is to dare to do the boldest things. There is, for example, hardly any higher praise which a teacher can give a scholar than to say of him that " he scorns to do a mean act." The boy of whom that can be said is the boy who is going to be in after years the kind of man whom you like to meet, whom you can trust, 74 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. who, in western phraseology, " will do to tie to." He is going to be the man, who, wherever he lives, will be looked up to and be trusted by the community; will be a leader in all measures for the welfare of society ; will be the man on whom his rector can lean with assurance ; on whose judgment the business men of his place can rely : to whom the widow and the orphan can go for advice and comfort ; and towards whom the eyes of those even who despise and hate the things which he esteems, will turn with involuntary admiration and respect. What this country needs is a larger supply of manly fellows to fill in with — of manly fellows who will stand by one another in defence of everything good, who will hold on to the highest things and yet not let go of the people who are below them ; who, without any cant or hypocrisy, but because in a manly way they believe in God and the things that are good, will do their best, by showing in their lives what Christianity really is, to prevent in this age of hardness and bitterness and growing hate, the Church of Christ from being separated by an im- passable gulf from the men and women for whom Christ died. It is a glorious thing to be this sort of a man, and there never was an age or a coun- try in which such men were so needed or had so blessed a future before them, as now and here. They are needed not merely as commanders or as leaders in the Church, but as privates and in DANIEL WEBSTER. 7$ society and business life — they are needed as ex- amples to show that a truly manly fellow can do his duty wherever God puts him, in the ranks just as well as in command. Daniel Webster. Hon. George F. Hoar. Used by permission. Mr. Webster made an impression upon the people of Massachusetts, in his time, as of a demi-god. His magnificent presence, his state- liness of manner, his dignity, from which he never bent, even in his most convivial and play- ful moments, his grandeur of speech and bearing, the habit of dealing exclusively with the greatest subjects, enabled him to maintain his state. His great, sane intelligence pervaded everything he said and did. But he has left behind few evi- dences of constructive statesmanship. There is hardly a great measure of legislation with which his name is connected, and he seems to us now to have erred in judgment in a great many cases, especially in undervaluing the great territory on the Pacific. He consented readily to the aban- donment of our claim to the territory between the forty-ninth parallel and that of fifty-four forty, which would have insured our supremacy on the Pacific, and have saved us from the 76 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. menace and rivalry there of the power of Eng- land. He voted against the treaty by which we acquired California. That, however, is proof of a larger foresight than that of any of his contemporaries. Alone he foresaw the terrible Civil War, to which everybody else of his time was blind. What even he did not foresee was the triumphant success of the Union arms. It is hardly to be doubted that if the Civil War had come in 1850 or 1851, instead of 1861, its result would have been different. But Mr. Webster's great service to his country, a service second to that of Washington alone, is that he inspired in the people to whom union and self-government seemed but a doubtful experiment, the sentiment of a nationality, of love of the flag, and a passion- ate attachment to the whole country. When his political life began we were a feeble folk, the bonds of the Union resting lightly upon the states, the contingency of disunion contemplated without much abhorrence by many leading men, both North and South. Mr. Webster awoke in the bosom of his countrymen the conception of national unity and national greatness. It has been said more than once that the guns of our artillery in the great battles of the Civil War were shotted with the reply to Hayne which ended with the well-known words, " Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable." History has not yet settled the question of the DANIEL WEBSTER. Tj motive that inspired the 7th of March speech. Doubtless there were good and patriotic men, men who had loved him till that hour, who went to their graves believing that Webster fell — fell like Lucifer, Son of the Morning. There are, doubt- less, men living who think so to-day. To the thought of these men Whittier gave voice in his terrible " Ichabod," which is said to have wounded the great heart of its subject more than any other stroke that ever smote his mighty forehead. But the general judgment of his countrymen, first mellowing and softening into the belief which Whittier himself expressed in his later and tender poem, " The Lost Oppor- tunity," seems gradually coming to the conclu- sion that Webster differed from the friends of freedom of his time, not in a weaker moral sense, but only in a larger and profounder prophetic vision. When he resisted the acquisition of California, he saw what no other man saw, the certainty of the Civil War. It was not given even to him to see its wonderful and victorious result. When he compromised he saw in like manner the danger he tried to avert. He did not see the safety only to be attained through the path of danger and strife. Some of us judged him severely. Let us think of him now only as the best type of the farmer's boy of the early time ; as the great example of the New England character of the day of his earlier man- ^8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. hood, as the great defender and lover of Massa- chusetts, as the orator who first taught his country her own greatness, and who bound fast with indissoluble strength the bonds of union ; as the first of American lawyers, the first of Ameri- can orators, the first of American statesmen, and as the delightful citizen and neighbor and friend, of whom the people of his town said when he was laid in the grave : " How lonesome the world seems ; " and of whom his nearest friend said, when he died : " From these conversations of friendship no man — no man, old or young — went away to remember one word of profanity, one allusion of indelicacy, one impure thought, one unbelieving suggestion, one doubt cast on the reality of virtue, of patriotism, of enthusiasm, of the pro- gress of man — one doubt cast on righteousness, or temperance, or judgment to come." Spanish Prisoners of War. William Dean Howells. From " Literature and Life." Copyright, 1902, by Har- per and Brothers. Used by permission. Certain summers ago our cruisers, the St. Louis and the Harvard, arrived at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with sixteen or seventeen hundred Spanish prisoners from Santiago de SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR. 79 Cuba. They were partly soldiers of the land forces picked up by our troops in the fights be- fore the city, but by far the greater part were sailors and marines from Cervera's ill-fated fleet. It was an afternoon of the brilliancy known only to an afternoon of the American summer, and the water of the swift Piscataqua River glittered in the sun with a really incomparable brilliancy. But nothing could light up the great monster of. a ship, painted the dismal lead-color which our White-Squadrons put on with the out- break of the war, and she lay sullen in the stream with a look of ponderous repose, to which the activities of the coaling-barges at her side, and of the sailors washing her decks, seemed quite unrelated. A long gun forward and a long gun aft threatened the fleet of launches, tugs, dories, and cat-boats which flut- tered about her, but the Harvard looked tired and bored, and seemed as if asleep. She had, in fact, finished her mission. The captives whom death had released had been carried out and sunk in the sea ; those who survived to a further imprisonment had all been taken to the pretty island a mile farther up the river, where the tide rushes back and forth through the Narrows like a torrent. Its defiant rapidity has won it there the graphic name of Pull-and-be-Damned ; and we could only hope to reach the island by a series of skilful tacks, which should humor both 80 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. the wind and the tide, both dead against us. Our boatman, one of those shore New Englanders who are born with a knowledge of sailing, was easily master of the art of this, but it took time. We drew nearer and nearer their prison isle, and it opened its knotty points and little ravines, overrun with sweet-fern, blueberry-bushes, and low blackberry-vines, and rigidly traversed with a high stockade of yellow pine boards. Six or eight long, low, wooden barracks stretched side by side across the general slope, with the captive officers quarters, sheathed in weather-proof black paper, at one end of them. About their doors swarmed the common prisoners, spilling out over the steps and on the grass, where some of them lounged, smoking. The prisoners were already filing out of their quarters at a rapid trot towards the benches where the great wash-boilers of coffee were set. Each man had a soup plate and bowl of enam- elled tin, and each in his turn received a quarter of a loaf of fresh bread and a big ladleful of steam- ing coffee, which he made off with to his place at one of the long tables under a shed at the side of the stockade. One young fellow tried to get a place not his own in the shade, and our officer when he came back explained that he was a guerrillero y and rather unruly. We heard that eight of the prisoners were in irons, by SPANISH PRISONERS OF WAR. 8 1 sentence of their own officers, for misconduct, but all save this guerrillero here were docile and obedient enough, and seemed only too glad to get peacefully at their bread and coffee. First among them came the men of the Cristobal Colon, and these were the best looking of all the captives. From their pretty fair aver- age the others varied to worse and worse, till a very scrub lot, said to be ex-convicts, brought up the rear. They were nearly all little fellows, and very dark, though here and there a six-footer towered up, or a blond showed among them. They were joking and laughing together, harm- lessly enough, but I must own that they looked a crew of rather sorry jail-birds ; though whether any kind of humanity clad in misfits of our navy blue and white, and other chance garments, with close-shaven heads, and sometimes bare feet, would have looked much less like jail-birds I am not sure. Still they were not prepossessing, and though some of them were pathetically young, they had none of the charm of boyhood. No doubt they did not do themselves justice, and to be herded there like cattle did not improve their chances of making a favorable impression on the observer. At a certain bugle-call they dispersed, when they had finished their bread and coffee, and scattered about over the grass, or returned to their barracks. We were told that these children of the sun dreaded its heat, and kept 82 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. out of it whenever they could, even in its decline ; but they seemed not so much to withdraw and hide themselves from that, as to vanish into the history of " old, unhappy, far-off " times, where prisoners of war properly belong. I roused my- self with a start as if I had lost them in the past, The whole thing was very American in the perfect decorum and the utter absence of cere- mony. Our good fellows were in the clothes they wore through the rights at Santiago, and they could not have put on much splendor if they had wished, but apparently they did not wish. They were simple, straightforward and adequate. There was some dry joking about the superiority of the prisoners' rations and lodgings, and our officer ironically professed his intention of messing with the Spanish officers. But there was no grudge, and not a shadow of ill-will, or of that stupid and atrocious hate toward the public enemy which abominable newspapers and politicians had tried to breed in the popular mind. There was nothing manifest but a sort of cheerful purpose to live up to that military ideal of duty which is so much nobler than the civil ideal of self-interest. Perhaps duty will yet become the civil ideal, when the peoples shall have learned to live for the common good, and are united for the operation of the industries as they now are for the hostilities. "FOREFATHERS' DAY." 83 " Forefathers' Day." Arthur Twining Hadley, LL. D. President of Yale University, OUR theme is an old one ; its application is vitally and intensely modern. As an event of history, the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers is re- ceding into the past, and tends to be overshadowed in our minds by other events of greater popular interest ; but as an example for men's lives it was never more important than at this opening of the twentieth century, and in the face of the new political and industrial problems which that century brings. It not infrequently happens that the meaning of a great anniversary is for a time partly lost ; and then found once more, when some renewal of the old conditions arises, and it becomes an inspiration for the present, as well as a remem- brance of the past. So it was with the birthday of our national independence. In the first half of the nineteenth century the celebration of the Fourth of July was becoming perfunctory. To those who knew not what it was to fight for an idea, the memory of Revolutionary heroes became obscured ; their principles mere phrases, from which the vital meaning had gone out. But when hearts were tried in the fires of another war, then did this anniversary rise into something more than an empty form of commemoration of 84 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. the dead, and make itself an occasion of patriotism in the living. So it has been, to some extent, with our remem- brance of the Puritan, both of the Old England and of the New. Although we have not ceased to render him gratitude for the hardships which he bore in order that his descendants might live a life of freedom, we have in some measure lost personal contact with the man and understanding of what he really was. By nine persons out of ten the Puritans of the seventeenth century are remembered chiefly for the pattern of their clothes or the phraseology of their creeds ; and even the tenth man, who really goes below the surface, often lays wrong emphasis on the different parts of their activity, and fails to understand the true reason of their power. He thinks of the Puritan not so much for what he did as for what he re- fused to do and forbade others to do ; as one who held himself aloof from the joys of life and apart from the sympathies of humanity. Not in such restrictions and refusals was the strength of the Puritan character founded. Not by any such negative virtue did it conquer the world. The true Puritan was intensely human — a man who " ate when he was hungry and drank when he was thirsty ; loved his friends and hated his enemies." If he submitted to self-imposed hardships, and practiced abstention where others allowed themselves latitude, it was not because he "FOREFATHERS* DAY." 85 had less range of interest than his fellows, but because he had more range. He did these things as a means to an end. His thoughts went be- yond the limits of the single day or the single island. He was a man who considered power as more than possession, principles as better than acquirements, public duty as paramount to per- sonal allegiance. He regarded himself as part of a universe under God's government. For the joy of taking his part in that government he steeled himself to a temper which spared not his own body nor that of others. His life, with all its powers, was held in trust. To the fulfilment of this trust he subordinated all considerations of personal pleasure. Men are always divided more or less clearly into two types — those who recognize this charac- ter of life as a trust and those who fail to recog- nize it. But not in all ages and in all countries does the distinction between the two types mani- fest itself sharply in historic action. For often the range of possible interests is so small, and the conduct of life so bound down by conventions, that the man who would pursue pleasure finds no opportunity for adventure, nor does the man who is ready to accept large trusts find occasion for their exercise. But in England, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the discovery of new worlds abroad and the development of new prob- lems at home gave opportunity for this divergence 86 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. of character to show itself to the utmost. The explorer who journeyed for adventure or for gain was differentiated from him who journeyed for freedom's sake. The citizen who was ready to seek his fullest enjoyment in the old political order was separated from him who would hazard that enjoyment for what he believed to be eternal principles of human government. It was because England had men of the latter type that her sub- sequent progress as a free nation has been real- ized. It was the Puritan, who, by subjecting his power and his love of life to self-imposed re- straints, made freedom possible in two hemi- spheres. Once more we are come to a similar parting of the ways. The close of the nineteenth century has witnessed an expansion of the geographical boundaries of men's interests comparable only to that which came three hundred years earlier, in the days of Queen Elizabeth. It is for the next generation to decide how these new fields shall be occupied. Shall it be to gratify ambition, commercial and political ? or shall it be to exer- cise a trust which has been given us for the ad- vancement of the human race? Shall we enter upon our new possessions in the spirit of the adventurer or in the spirit of the Puritan? The conflict between these two views will be the really important issue in the complex maze of inter- national relations during the half century which "FOREFATHERS' DAY." 87 is to come. The outcome of this conflict is likely to determine the course of the world's history for ages thereafter. Nor is it in international politics and in prob- lems of colonization alone that this issue is aris- ing between those who regard the world as a field for pleasure and those who regard it as a place for the exercise of a trust. The devel- opment of modern industry has placed the alter- native even more sharply before us in the order- ing of our life at home. The day is past when the automatic action of self-interest could be trusted to regulate prices, or when a few simple principles of commercial law, if properly applied, secured the exercise of justice in matters of trade. The growth of large industries and of large fortunes enables those who use them rightly to do the public much better service than was possible in ages previous. It also permits those who use them wrongly to render the public correspondingly greater injury. No system of legislation is likely to meet this diffi- culty. The outcome depends on the character of the people. Is our business to be dominated by the spirit of the adventurer, or by the spirit of the Puritan ? Shall we regard wealth as a means of enjoyment and commercial power as a plaything to be used in the game of personal ambition, or shall we treat the fortunes which come into our hands as a trust to be exercised SS BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. for the benefit of the people, rigidly abstaining from its abuse ourselves, and unsparingly refus- ing to associate with others who abuse it ? We have no right to sit here this evening and com- memorate our descent from the Pilgrim Fathers if we have any doubt concerning our answer. Let us throw ourselves, heart and soul, on that side of the industrial question which proves us worthy of Puritan ancestry — the side which regards wealth as a trust, to be used in behalf of the whole people and in the furtherance of the purposes of God's government. Abroad and at home the issue is defining itself. We have the chance to prove whence we sprang. We cannot add to the glory of those whose deeds we celebrate, but we can help to carry their work one historic step further toward its accomplishment. In the words of Abraham Lincoln — no less appropriate now than on the day when they were first spoken at Gettysburg — " It is for us to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us ; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause to which they gave the last full measure of devo- tion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ; that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth." CITIZENSHIP, 89 Citizenship. Hon. William P. Frye. Abridged for this collection by Woodbury Pulsifer, Secretary to Senator Frye. Citizenship ! What is citizenship ? It has a broader signification than you or I are apt to give it. Citizenship does not mean alone that the man who possesses it shall be obedient to the law, shall be kindly to his neighbors, shall regard the rights of others, shall perform his duties as juror, shall, if the hour of peril comes, yield his time, his property and his life to his country. It means more than that. It means that his country shall guarantee to him and pro- tect him in every right which the Constitution gives him. What right has the Republic to demand his life, his property, in the hour of peril, if, when his hour of peril comes, it fails him ? Why, a man died in England a few years ago, Lord Napier of Magdala, and his death reminded me of an incident which illustrates this, an incident which gave that great lord his name. A few years ago King Theodore of Abyssinia seized Captain Campbell, a British citizen, and incarcerated him in a dungeon on the top of a mountain nine thousand feet high. England demanded his release, and King Theo- dore refused. England fitted out and sent on 90 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. five thousand English soldiers, and ten thousand Sepoys, debarked them on the coast, marched them nine hundred miles through swamp and morass under a burning sun. Then they marched up the mountain height, they scaled the walls, they broke down the iron gates, they reached down into the dungeon, they took that one British citizen like a brand from the burning and carried him down the mountain side, across the morass, put him on board the white-winged ship and bore him away to England in safety. That cost Great Britain millions of dollars, and it made General Napier Lord Napier of Magdala. Was not that a magnificent thing for a great country to do? Only think of it! A country that has an eye sharp enough to see way across the ocean, way across the morass, way up into the mountain top, way down into the dungeon, one citizen, one of her thirty millions, and then has an arm strong enough to reach across the ocean, way across the morass, way up the moun- tain height and down into the dungeon and take that one and bear him away home in safety. Who would not live and die, too, for the country that can do that ? This country of ours is worth our thought, our care, our labor, our lives. What a magnificent country it is ! What a Republic for the people, where all are kings ! Men of great wealth, great power, great influence can live without any difficulty in a monarchy ; but CITIZENSHIP. 91 how can you and I, how can the average man, live under despotic power? Oh, this blessed Republic of ours stretches its hand down to the men and lifts them up, while despotism puts its heavy hand on their heads and presses them down ! This blessed Republic of ours speaks to every boy in the land, black or white, rich or poor, and asks him to come up higher and higher. You remember that boy out here on the prairie, the son of a widowed mother, poor, neglected perhaps by all except the dear old mother. But the Republic did not neglect him. The Republic said to that boy : " Boy, there is a ladder, its foot is on the earth, its top is in the sky. Boy, go up." And the boy mounted that ladder rung by rung ; by the rung of the free schools, by the rung of the academy, by the rung of the college, by the rung of splendid service in the United States army, by the rung of the United States House of Representatives, by the rung of the United States Senate, by the rung of the Pres- idency of the great Republic, by the rung of a patient sickness and a heroic death, until James A. Garfield is a name to be forever honored in the history of our country. Now, is not a Republic like that worth the tribute of our conscience? Is it not entitled to our best thought, to our holiest purpose? Let us pledge ourselves to give it our loyal service and support until every man in this 92 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. Republic, black or wnite, shall be protected in all the right's which the Constitution of the United States bestows upon him. Reverence for the Flag. Gen. Horace Porter. In preserving among the sons that spirit of patriotism which has been handed down from the sires, I know of no better method of incul- cating this sentiment in the minds of the youth of the rising generation than an effort to inspire them with a still more exalted respect and rever- ence for the flag — that symbol of national su- premacy, that emblem of the country's glory. They should be taught that that flag is not simply a banner for holiday display ; that it is not merely a piece of bunting which can be pur- chased for a few shillings in the nearest shop, but that it is the proud emblem of dignity, au- thority, power; that if insulted, millions will spring to its defense. They should be taught that as that flag is composed of, and derives its chief beauty from its different colors, so should its ample folds cover and protect its citizens of different color. It is for these reasons that I like to see the flags of the war for the integrity of the Union carried through the streets in the hands of our REVERENCE FOR THE FLAG. 93 veterans upon fete days. Those precious war banners, bullet-riddled, battle-stained, many of them but remnants of their former selves, with scarcely enough left of them on which to imprint the names of the battles they have seen. Every tattered shred which flutters in the breeze is an object lesson in patriotism. The youth of the land should be made to feel that their country's flag is to be their pillar of cloud by day, their pillar of fire by night ; that it is to wave above them in victory, be their rallying-point in defeat, and if, perchance, they offer up their lives a sac- rifice in its defense, its crimson stripes will min- gle with their generous hearts' blood ; its gentle folds will rest upon their bosom in death ; its very presence there upon their bodies, coffined or uncoffined, will write a more enduring epitaph than that on the sarcophagus in which the great Sesostris sleeps. That flag should be kept everywhere in view. It is particularly necessary in a land like this, in which there are so many who have been reared under foreign flags, and who cannot be made too familiar with the flag of the great Republic. I think there would be nothing more grateful to the hearts of the American people than to have it ordained by national and State enactment that the flag of the country should be hoisted over every Government building, every public place, every prominent memorial, and especially over 94 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. every schoolhouse — kept there by day and by night, through calm and through storm, and never hauled down. At the beginning of our last war a rallying cry rang throughout the land, which quickened every pulse, which made the blood tingle in the veins of every loyal citizen — a rally- ing cry which we cannot too often repeat: "If any man hauls down the American flag, shoot him on the spot." The Art of Optimism. William De Witt Hyde, LL. D. President of Bowdoin College. Arranged by President Hyde for this collection. THE world we live in is a world of mingled good and evil. Whether it is chiefly good or chiefly bad depends on how we take it. To look at the world in such a way as to emphasize the evil is the art of pessimism. To look at it in such a way as to bring out the good, and throw the evil into the background, is the art of optimism. - s The facts are the same in either case. It is simply a question of perspective and empha- sis. Whether we shall be optimists or pessimists depends partly on temperament, but chiefly on will. If you are happy it is largely to your own credit. If you are miserable it is chiefly your THE ART OF OPTIMISM. 95 own fault. I propose to show you both pes- simism and optimism ; give a prescription for each, and leave you to take whichever you like best : for whether you are a pessimist or an optimist doesn't depend on whether the world is wholly good or wholly bad, or whether you have a hard lot or an easy one. It depends on what you like, and what you want, and what you resolve to be. Perchance you are the most fortunate and happy person among my hearers. There are thousands of people who would be miserable were they situated precisely as you are. They would make themselves miserable, because that is their temperament ; that is their way of looking at things. And even in your happy and enviable condition, with all your health and wealth, and hosts of friends, and abundance of interests, they would find plenty of stuff to make their misery out of. On the other hand, you may be the person of all others among my hearers who has the hardest time, who has lost dearest friends, who has the severest struggle with poverty, who has worst enemies, who meets crudest unkindness, who seems to have least to live for. Thousands of people would be suprem- ely happy if they were in precisely your circum- stances. Life is like the ocean. It drowns one man, because he yields to it passively and blindly. It buoys up the other because he strikes it skil- fully, and buffets it with lusty sinews. g6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. There is enough that is bad in every life to make one miserable who is so inclined. We all know people who have plenty to eat, a roof over their heads, a soft bed to lie in, money in the bank to cover all probable needs for the rest of their days, plenty of friends, good social position, an unbroken family circle, good education, even the profession of some sort of religion ; who yet by magnifying something that happened to them a long while ago ; or something that may happen to them at some time to come ; or what somebody has said about them ; or the work they have to do ; or the slight some one has shown them, or even without anything as definite as even these trifles, contrive to make themselves and everybody else perpetually wretched and uncomfortable. These people have acquired the art of pessimism. Practically, anybody can be a pessimist who wants to. The art is easily acquired. Here are the rules for it. Live in the passive voice ; intent on what you can get, rather than on what you can do : in the subjunctive mood ; meditating on what might be, rather than what actually is : in the past or fu- ture tense ; either harping on what has been, or worrying about what will be, rather than facing the facts of the present : in the third person ; finding fault with other people instead of setting your own affairs in order : in the plural number; THE ART OF OPTIMISM. 97 following the standards of respectability of other people rather than your own perception of what is fit and proper. Keep these rules faithfully, always measuring the worth of life in terms of personal pleasure, rather than in terms of growth of character or service of high ends, and you will be a pessimist before you know it. For pessimism is the logi- cal and inevitable outcome of that way of look- ing at life. A sound optimism accepts with open eyes all the hard facts on which pessimism builds. En- joyment is fleeting. Nothing can permanently satisfy us. As Browning said to an artist who complained that he was so dissatisfied with what he had done, " But think, if you were satisfied, how little you would be satisfied with ! " Optim- ism proclaims this very incapacity of ours to be satisfied with anything finite, the glory of our nature, the promise and potency of our progress and development, the assurance of our immortal- ity. If good is satisfied feeling, which is to be given to us ready-made, then indeed we shall never get it, and pessimism is the ultimate truth. If good is a state of eager and enthusiastic activ- ity of will, then this world of ours is just the best place imaginable to give field for this activity. Having given rules for the art of pessimism, I suppose I ought to be equally explicit in regard to optimism. I will here again adopt the easily 9$ BEST AMERICAN OKA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. rememberable form in which the rules for pessim- ism were cast. Indeed, the rules for optimism are simply the inverse of the rules for pessimism. Live in the active voice ; intent on what you can do rather than on what happens to you : in the indicative mood ; concerned with facts as they are rather than as they might be ; in the present tense ; concentrated on the duty in hand, without regret for the past or worry about the future: in the first person; criticising yourself rather than condemning others : in the singular number; seeking the approval of your own con- science rather than popularity with the many. Whoever lives the life of such unselfish devotion to the good of others and of all, and lives it in the active voice, indicative mood, present tense, first person, singular number, is bound to find his life full and rich and glad and free ; is bound, in other words, to be an optimist. The New Era in Higher Education. James B. Angell, LL. D. President of the University of Michigan. It is of the highest importance that our in- creased facilities for higher education and any new enthusiasm which these may engender for devotion to scholarship, shall not be permitted to make students indifferent to their duty as educated citizens or rob them of their interest in THE NEW ERA IN HIGHER EDUCA TION. 99 public affairs. The universities must not become monasteries, in which men are trained to exclude themselves from proper participation in the right guidance of public opinion. They who are known as professional politicians sometimes have their jests at " the scholar in politics." Doubtless he has, like other men, sometimes made mistakes. Perhaps he has occasionally overrated the value of his services. Very often while pursuing a manly and straightforward course, he has been outwitted and circumvented by the cunning schemers who call themselves practical politicians, because they do not scruple to employ means to which he will not descend. But no thoughtful man will deny that scholars as citizens have at least as plain and responsible duties as other citizens. Nor will it be easy to deny that if by reason of their training they have some special advantages for instructing and guid- ing others in the solution of grave public ques- tions, they have by this fact a special responsibil- ity and duty laid on them. Now, if anything is obvious, if anything has been demonstrated by the history of this govern- ment, it is that our democratic institutions cannot be successfully worked, unless we can somehow secure the prevalence of an intelligent public opinion on public matters and a general willing- ness on the part of our citizens to offer whatever sacrifices and render whatever services are re- auirad to make that public opinion operative. IOO BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. Men have been very busy in devising various kinds of constitutional or legislative machinery to secure wise legislation and just and effective administration. But no improvements in organ- ization, no contrivances, however ingenious, can insure us a pure democratic government, unless we have an enlightened public opinion and a patriotic spirit guiding and sustaining it in all its life. Says Lord Rosebery in a recent speech, in which he urges upon his countrymen the impor- tance of providing more generously for education, " a great, trained and intelligent population, capable of sustained thinking on public questions, is essential to success in the modern world." Now there is a certain danger that men, who become absorbed in literary or scientific pursuits, lose somewhat of the interest, which it is their duty to cherish, in public affairs or at any rate refrain from making the weight of their well- considered judgment felt by those around them. They may indeed seek no official position, and may shrink from it if it is offered to them. They may prefer not to engage in the rough and tum- ble contests of bitter personal campaigns, though even this may at times become the duty of every good citizen. But in some manner, through some one of the many channels of influence open to every intelligent man, they should make their legitimate contribution toward the creation of a NE W ERA IN HIGHER ED UCA TION. I O I sound public sentiment in every emergency. If the maintenance of such a sentiment is the essen- tial condition of the successful operation of Republican institutions, how can the best trained minds plead any excuse for failure to do their full part in creating and upholding and manifest- ing such a sentiment in every hour of the country's need ? There could be no greater calamity for the universities than for the belief to gain ground that the education they furnish to their choicest and most gifted graduates shuts them off from a living sympathy and fellowship with the great body of their countrymen who have not had the fortune to share their advantages of training, and from a vital interest in a pure and beneficent administration of government. It would be a calamity to the nation to have such a wall of partition between the scholars and the rest of the people. But it would, if permitted, be a yet greater misfortune for the universities which had begotten such children. There is, indeed, little danger of such a calamity in very great national emergencies. The read- iness with which in our Civil War the college halls were deserted by the thousands of young men, who hastened to the front, many of them, alas ! never to return, is a sufficient proof of this. The peril is in quieter days, when it is not so obvious that the vigilant interest of all is needed 102 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS 0E TO-DA Y. to safeguard the public welfare, and when, there- fore, the scholar in the sweet seclusion of his study is tempted to let things drift wheresoever they will, without any remonstrance on his part. We may confidently look for two results of the magnificent endowments of universities and institutions of research. The number of gifted men and women who will devote themselves to very advanced studies and to original investiga- tions in every field of research will be largely increased. And the boundaries of knowledge will be expanded. Rich as the last century has been beyond all the centuries in important gains in every branch of learning, in the discovery of scientific principles, and in the application of science to the arts of life, it is reasonable to expect that the gains of the present century will be yet greater. Happy are you who are young enough to cherish the hope of living to see them. Happier still are those choice spirits among you, — and I trust there are some — who may be con- spicuous in securing those gains for humanity. Decoration Day. Abridged. Hon. W. Bourke Cockran. The character of a nation is often known by its festivals. The character of the festival we celebrate to-day is the most unique in the his- DE CORA TION DAY. 1 03 tory of the world. We celebrate in all its en- tirety the sublime epoch when fidelity to the Republic triumphed over the dangers that com- prised the Civil War, and we emerged from the conflict radiant with the light of liberty estab- lished and indestructible American institutions, with the undying vigor of American patriotism. The conflict in which we engaged was not made by the generation in which we live. It was a legacy handed down by the fathers of the Re- public after the foreign invader had been driven out. But the Union soldier was great in peace as well as in war. His was not merely a triumph of arms ; it was a triumph of heart and mind, for the Union soldier won the love of the foe that he vanquished. To-day, throughout the length and breadth of the country, there is a love for the flag of the Union. To-day the Union stands, not defended by armed force or by frowning for- tresses. Its foundations are laid in the hearts of our citizens, South as well as North, and it will be durable and eternal because of that founda- tion. But although the vigor of the Union soldier in taking up arms was creditable to him, he also deserves credit for the manner in which he laid down his arms. Never before did a vic- torious army so lay down its arms at the behest of civil rulers without the slightest disturbance throughout the length and breadth of the land. 104 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. The lesson which this day teaches above all others is that no matter what difficulties may arise, the patriotism of this republic will be able to surmount them. No matter what dangers may threaten our institutions, there is always to be in reserve the American patriotism sufficient to solve every question and surmount every diffi- culty. The victory of the Union soldiers proved the capacity and the power of this patriotism which underlies American citizenship. No sooner had the smoke lifted from Southern battlefields ; no sooner had the rivers that had run red with blood once more resumed their course clear and pellucid to the sea, and the South was seen humbled, than the men of the North turned with charity and brotherly love to the aid of the men with whom they had fought. The victory which was achieved for the Union was thus made a permanent one for the union of these States. The lesson of the Union was not ended in 1865. The mission of the Union soldier did not close with the war. It continues to-day as a patriot- ism which is the best security of the government. We are reminded of the survivors as we turn to- day from the graves of the brave men who were the heroes of the war. On the Capitol at Washington, surmounting the great dome where Congress is in session, there may be seen a bright light high above all else on PROFIT OF THE LABORER AND CONSUMER. 10$ the building. And as you recede from the place, and the turrets and fluted columns of the edifice disappear in the darkness, the light at the top seems to be higher and higher, and finally seems to blend with the horizon until finally only this light marks the temple of freedom of our be- loved Government. And, as we celebrate this Decoration Day, looking back on the martyrs of the Civil War, their deeds shall be to us the brilliant light which shall grow ever brighter and brighter, and illumine the pathway of the Repub- lic to liberty, prosperity, and happiness. The Profit of the Laborer and Consumer. Abridged. Hon. Elihu Root, The industrial history of the last half century is a history first of the steady increase of produc- tive power, and second only to that of the con- tinual struggle between these four interests — the brains, the capital, the laborer, and the consumer, to secure what each considers to be a fair share of the benefits of the increased wealth. That struggle will continue so long as the increase of productive power and the added increments of wealth that come from that increase continue. Capital and brains always get the advantage at first. The first fruits of each new increase of 106 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. productive power, whether through invention or through organization, come to them. But our industrial history shows that the laborer and the consumer slowly but surely wrest their share of the advantage from capital and secure it for themselves. The organizers of the Sugar Trust made a great deal of money for themselves, but we are getting sugar now for less than it cost to make it before the Sugar Trust was formed. The organizers of the Standard Oil Company have made a great deal of money, but the poor- est American farmer is lighting his little house to-night at trifling cost more brilliantly than palaces were lighted a century ago : and these are the consumers' shares of the wealth created by the brains and capital of the Sugar Company and the Standard Oil Company. The continually recurring contests between capital and labor are a necessary part in this great process of industrial development and dis- tribution of wealth — each striving to get what it thinks to be its share and naturally differing about the proportions. There is no occasion to groan or to wring our hands or to be alarmed over the process. It is natural and healthy and a process of industrial improvement. Of course there are wrongs committed, unjustifiable and ir- ritating things are done upon both sides, but these are continually being remedied and just re- sults are continually being wrought out. We PROFIT OF THE LABORER AND CONSUMER, loy are in the habit of saying that the interests of capital and labor are one, or that they are recip- rocal, which is another way of saying the same thing. Their interests are one in the production of wealth, and their interests are reciprocal in not being so unreasonable about the division of the benefits as to stop the production. There is a continual approach toward a good understanding of the terms and relations which are dictated by a recognition of these mutual and reciprocal interests. If you will look back at the condition of the railroad business at the time of the Debs riots, then consider the rela- tions since established between the railroad owners and the associated engineers, firemen, trainmen and conductors under the leadership of Mr. Arthur, Mr. Sargent, Mr. Clarke and Mr. Morrissey, you will see a striking illustration of the progress being made. Another good illustration is to be found in the agreement made the other day between the tin plate manufacturers and their workmen, in which the workmen voluntarily agreed to a reduction of wages in order to enable the manufacturers to underbid foreign competitors for the contract to supply tin cans for the Standard Oil product. Another illustration is the agreement between employers and employed for the annual readjust- ment of wages throughout the greater part of the bituminous coal field. Io8 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. The more intelligent the parties are, the more readily such relations are reached, and as we are all growing more intelligent, all learning all the time, the prospect is not dark, but bright. The "Open Door" Policy in China. Hon. Cushman K. Davis. The subjection of China to full intercourse with Western civilization is the most stupendous secular event since the discovery of America by Columbus. No diplomatic achievement in our history, ex- cepting the treaty negotiated by Franklin by which our independence was acknowledged, and the conventions by which Louisiana and the Provinces of Mexico were acquired, can be placed before this negotiation. It did not expand our possession, but it will expand our influence and ascendency immeasurably. It is the result, how- ever, of the two expansions as to Louisiana and Mexico, and of the acquisition of the Philip- pines, Alaska and Hawaii, without which the United States would have been the most remote from, instead of being as it is now, the nearest of all the nations to the great Asiatic market. These negotiations bound all the powers recipro- cally to identity and equality of right and duty as to everything which can pertain to commerce and intercourse with China. THE " OPEN DOOR " POLICY IN CHINA. IO9 The sovereignty of the United States has been expanded immensely by the war with Spain. I believe that for this the American people were ordained. There need be no fear for the future. No administration will ever attempt, it will not be permitted by the controlling majesty of that people to attempt, to contract that sovereignty within the limits from which it has expanded, bearing with it all the imperial powers of right- eous government, regenerating civilization and irreversible progress. With all this the United States will, as always heretofore, stand for peace. It is as true of na- tions as it is of the smallest villages, or of two families, or of two men, that peace is secured by obedience to that precept of righteous selfishness — " mind your own business." We shall attend to our own affairs. We shall not entangle our- selves in the controversies of European States; nor, by any unfriendly act, intermeddle with that which does not concern us. Those states will fight to the utterance their own wars in their own way, and be judges for themselves of the causes for which those wars shall be waged. The United States is the great armed Neutral of the world. It will have peace, not as the boon of a suppliant non-combatant, but as the right of a peace-loving, armored, puissant nation whose rights are secured by its manifest ability to cause other nations to respect them. I IO BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. John Marshall. Oliver Wendell Holmes. Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Used by permission. As we walk down Court Street, Boston, in the midst of a jostling crowd, our eyes are like to fall upon the small, dark building that stands at the head of State Street, and, like an ominous reef, divides the stream of business in its course to the gray cliffs that tower beyond. And, who- ever we may be, we may chance to pause and forget our hurry for a moment, as we remember that the first waves that foretold the coming storm of the Revolution broke around that reef. In that old State House, we remember, James Otis argued the case of the writs of assistance, and in that argument laid one of the foundations for American constitutional law. Just as that little building is not diminished but rather is enhanced and glorified by the vast structures which somehow it turns into a background, so the beginnings of our national life, lose none of their greatness by contrast with all the mighty things of later date, beside which, by every law of number and measure, they ought to seem so small. To those who took part in the Civil War, the greatest battle of the Revolution seems little more than a reconnoissance in force, and Lexington and Concord were mere skir- JOHN MARSHALL. 1 1 1 mishes that would not find mention in the news- papers. Yet veterans who have known battle on a modern scale, are not less aware of the spiritual significance of those little fights, than the enlightened children of commerce who tell us that soon war is to be no more. If I were to think of John Marshall simply by number and measure in the abstract, I might hesitate in my superlatives just as I should hesitate over the battle of Brandywine if I thought of it apart from its place in the line of historic cause. It is most idle to take a man apart from the circumstances which were his. Remove a square inch of mucous membrane, and the tenor will sing no more. Remove a little cube from the brain, and the orator will be speechless ; or another, and the brave, generous, and profound spirit becomes a querulous trifler. A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strat- egic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there. There fell to Marshall perhaps the greatest place that was ever filled by a judge ; but when I consider his might, his justice, and his wisdom, I do fully believe that if American law were to be represented by a single figure, sceptic and worshipper alike would agree without dispute that the figure could be but one alone, and that one John Marshall. 1 1 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. We live by symbols, and what shall be sym- bolized by any image of the sight depends upon the mind of him who sees it. The setting aside of this day in honor of a great judge may stand to a Virginian for the glory of his glorious State ; to a patriot for the fact that time has been on Marshall's side, and that the theory for which Hamilton argued, and Webster spoke, and Grant fought, and Lincoln died, is now our corner stone. To the more abstract but farther-reaching contem- plation of the lawyer it stands for the rise of a new body of Jurisprudence, by which guiding principles are raised above the reach of statute and State, and judges are intrusted with a solemn, and hitherto unheard of authority and duty. To one who lives in what may seem to him a solitude of thought, this day — as it marks the triumph of a man whom some Presidents of his time bade carry out his judgments as he could — this day marks the fact that all thought is social, is on its way to action ; that, to borrow the expression of a French writer, every idea tends to become first a catechism and then a code ; and that, accord ing to its worth his unhelped meditation may one day mount a throne, and without armies, or with them, may shoot across the world the electric despotism of an unresisted power. It is all a symbol, if you like, but so is the flag. The flag is but a bit of bunting to one who insists on prose. Yet, thanks to Marshall, and to the men of his THE UPLIFTING OF THE NEGRO RACE. II3 generation, its red is our life-blood, its stars our world, its blue our heaven. It owns our land. At will it throws away our lives. The Uplifting of the Negro Race. Booker T. Washington. Abridged. Contributed by the author. One-third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. Ignorant and inexpe- rienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of at the bottom ; that a seat in Congress or the State Legislature was sought more than real estate or industrial skill ; that the political convention or stump speaking had more attractions than start- ing a dairy farm or truck garden. A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal : " Water, water ; we die of thirst ! " The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back : " Cast down your bucket where you are." A second time the signal, " Water, water ; send us water ! " ran up from the distressed vessel, and was answered : " Cast down your bucket where you are." And 1 14 BEST AMERICAN OR A TlONS OF TO-DA Y. a third and fourth signal for water was answered : " Cast down your bucket where you are." The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River. To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next door neighbor, I would say : " Cast down your bucket where you are " — cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in com- merce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world. Our greatest danger is, that in the great leap from slavery to freedom, we may overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the produc- tions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor, and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life ; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, THE UPLIFTING OF THE NEGRO RACE. 1 1 5 the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities. To those of the white race who look to the in- coming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I say to my own race, " Cast down your bucket where you are." Cast it down among the eight million Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fire- sides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forest, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encourag- ing them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most 1 1 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y % patient, faithful, law abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen. As we have proved our loyalty to you in the past, in nursing your children, watching by the sick-bed of your mothers and fathers, and often following them with tear-dimmed eyes to their graves, so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours ; interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one. In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the ringers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress. There is no defense or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and develop- ment of all. If anywhere there are efforts tend- ing to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encourag- ing and making him the most useful and intelli- gent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent, interest. These efforts will be twice blessed — " blessing him that gives and him that takes." There is no escape through law of man or God from the inevitable : " The laws of changeless justice bind, Oppressor with oppressed ; And close as sin and suffering joined, We march to fate abreast." THE UPLIFTING OF THE NEGRO RACE. W] Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upwards, or they will pull against you the load downwards. We shall con- stitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third of its intelligence and progress ; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnating, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic. The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremest folly, and that progress in the enjoy- ment of all the privileges that will come to us, must be the result of severe and constant struggle, rather than of artificial forcing. No race that has anything to contribute to the markets of the world is long in any degree ostracised. It is im- portant and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges. The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera house. In conclusion, I pledge that in your effort to work out the great and intricate problem which God has laid at the doors of the South, you shall have at all times the patient, sympathetic help of my race and let us pray God it will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial ani- 1 1 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. mosities and suspicions, in a determination to ad- minister absolute justice, and in a willing obedi- ence among all classes to the mandates of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our blessed South a new Heaven and a new earth. The Last Address of William McKinley. Delivered at the Pan-American Exposition at Buffalo, the day before he was assassinated. Abridged. After all, how near one to the other is every part of the world. Modern inventions have brought into close relation widely separated peo- ples and made them better acquainted. Geo- graphic and political divisions will continue to exist, but distances have been effaced. Swift ships and fast trains are becoming cosmopolitan. They invade fields which a few years ago were impenetrable. The world's products are ex- changed as never before, and with increasing trans- portation facilities come increasing knowledge and larger trade. Prices are fixed with mathe- matical precision by supply and demand. The world's selling prices are regulated by market and crop reports. We travel greater distances in a shorter space of time and with more ease than THE LAST ADDRESS OF WM. McKINLEY. 1 1 9 was ever dreamed of by the fathers. Isolation is no longer possible or desirable. The same im- portant news is read, though in different lan- guages, the same day in all Christendom. The telegraph keeps us advised of what is oc- curring everywhere, and the press foreshadows, with more or less accuracy, the plans and pur- poses of the nations. Market prices of products and of securities are hourly known in every com- mercial mart, and the investments of the people extend beyond their own national boundaries into the remotest parts of the earth. Vast transactions are conducted and international exchanges are made by the tick of the cable. Every event of interest is immediately bulletined. The quick gathering and transmission of news, like rapid transit, are of recent origin, and are only made possible by the genius of the inventor and the courage of the investor. It took a special messenger of the Government, with every facility known at the time for rapid travel, nine- teen days to go from the City of Washington to New Orleans with a message to General Jackson that the war with England had ceased and a treaty of peace had been signed. How different now ! We reached General Miles, in Porto Rico, and he was able through the military telegraph to stop his army on the firing line with the message that the United States and Spain had signed a protocol suspending hostilities. We 1 20 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. knew almost instantly of the first shots fired at Santiago, and the subsequent surrender of the Spanish forces was known at Washington within less than an hour of its consummation. The first ship of Cervera's fleet had hardly emerged from that historic harbor when the fact was flashed to our Capital, and the swift destruction that followed was announced immediately through the wonderful medium of telegraphy. So accustomed are we to safe and easy com- munication with distant lands that its temporary interruption, even in ordinary times, results in loss and inconvenience. We shall never forget the days of anxious waiting and suspense when no information was permitted to be sent from Pekin, and the diplomatic representatives of the nations in China, cut off from all communication, inside and outside of the walled capital, were surrounded by an angry and misguided mob that threatened their lives ; nor the joy that thrilled the world when a single message from the Govern- ment of the United States brought, through our Minister, the first news of the safety of the be- siege diplomats. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was not a mile of steam railroad on the globe ; now there are enough miles to make its circuit many times. Then there was not a line of electric telegraph ; now we have a vast mileage traversing all lands and all seas. God and man THE LAST ADDRESS OF WM. Mc KIN LEY. 121 have linked the nations together. No nation can longer be indifferent to any other. And as we are brought more and more in touch with each other, the less occasion is there for misunder- standings, and the stronger the disposition, when we have differences, to adjust them in the court of arbitration, which is the noblest forum for the settlement of international disputes. My fellow citizens, trade statistics indicate that this country is in a state of unexampled prosperity. The figures are almost appalling. They show that we are utilizing our fields and forests and mines, and that we are furnishing profitable employment to the millions of work- ing-men throughout the United States, bringing comfort and happiness to their homes, and mak- ing it possible to lay by savings for old age and disability. That all the people are participating in this great prosperity is seen in every Ameri- can community and shown by the enormous and unprecedented deposits in our savings banks. Our duty in the care and security of these deposits and their safe investment demands the highest integrity and the best business capacity of those in charge of these depositories of the people's earnings. We have a vast and intricate business, built up through years of toil and struggle, in which every part of the country has its stake, which will not permit of either neglect, or of undue selfishness. 1 22 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. No narrow, sordid policy will subserve it. The greatest skill and wisdom on the part of manu- facturers and producers will be required to hold and increase it. Our industrial enterprises, which have grown to such great proportions, affect the homes and occupations of the people and the welfare of the country. Our capacity to produce has developed so enormously, and our products have so multiplied, that the problem of more markets requires our urgent and immediate at- tention. Only a broad and enlightened policy will keep what we have. No other policy will get more. In these times of marvelous business energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future, strengthening the weak places in our in- dustrial and commercial systems, that we may be ready for any storm or strain. By sensible trade arrangements which will not interrupt our home production we shall extend the outlets for our increasing surplus. A system which provides a mutual exchange of commodi- ties is manifestly essential to the continued and healthful growth of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied security that we can forever sell everything and buy little or nothing. If such a thing were possible it would not be best for us, or for those with whom we deal. We should take from our customers such of their products as we can use without harm to our in- dustries and labor. Reciprocity is the natural THE LAST ADDRESS OF WM. McKINLEY. 1 23 outgrowth of our wonderful industrial develop- ment under the domestic policy now firmly es- tablished. What we produce beyond our domestic con- sumption must have a vent abroad. The excess must be relieved through a foreign outlet, and we should sell everywhere we can and buy wher- ever the buying will enlarge our sales and pro- ductions, and thereby make a greater demand for home labor. The period of exclusiveness is past. The ex- pansion of our trade and commerce is the press- ing problem. Commercial wars are unprofit- able. A policy of good will and friendly trade relations will prevent reprisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with the spirit of the times ; measures of retaliation are not. If, per- chance, some of our tariffs are no longer needed for revenue or to encourage and protect our in- dustries at home, why should they not be em- ployed to extend and promote our markets abroad? Then, too, we have inadequate steam- ship service. New lines of steamships have al- ready been put in commission between the Pacific coast ports of the United States and those on the western coasts of Mexico and Cen- tral and South America. These should be fol- lowed up with direct steamship lines between the western coast of the United States and South American ports. One of the needs of the times 124 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. is direct commercial lines from our vast fields of production to the fields of consumption that we have but barely touched. Next in advantage to having the thing to sell is to have the conveyance to carry it to the buyer. We must encourage our merchant marine. We must have more shipSo They must be under the American flag, built and manned and owned by Americans. These will not only be profitable in a commercial sense ; they will be messengers of peace and amity wherever they go. We must build the Isthmian Canal, which will unite the two oceans and give a straight line of water communication with the western coasts of Central and South America and Mexico. The construction of a Pacific cable can not be longer postponed. Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not conflict ; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war. Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth. THE NAVY. 125 i The Navy. Admiral George Dewey. Contributed to this collection by Admiral Dewey. The world knows to-day the important part which the Navy has had in all the wars in which our nation has been engaged since its existence. The part which the Navy has taken in the mak- ing of history has been a glorious one from the days of 1776 until the present moment. To re- call the names of such men as Paul Jones, Perry, McDonough, Farragut, and a host of others, awakens memories of those true American patri- ots and of their gallant deeds in behalf of home and country. Without doubt some of you now present are descended from sailor heroes who took part in the early struggles of this nation upon the seas. Our countrymen have known, of course, during all the intervening years, that there was a Navy at the time of the Revolution ; but it has remained for an American naval officer, in very recent years, to show through his writings what tremen- dous importance attached to the exploits of our early Navy, small as it was. In the War of the Revolution the United States as a nation had only forty-one vessels in com- mission, including the " Bonhomme Richard " and her four Franco-American consorts. Of 126 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. these, twenty-four were lost by capture or wreck during the war. Within the same period, how- ever, the number of war vessels lost by the British was one hundred and two. It will thus be seen that at the very beginning of our country's exist- ence there was set for future generations the example of inflicting upon the enemy's sea-power a very much greater loss than our own sustained ; and all our history shows that the^Navy has prof- ited by this example. In addition to war vessels, many privateers were engaged in capturing and destroying mer- chant vessels sailing under English colors, the total number of captures of all kinds being more than eight hundred. In this war our infant Navy developed the abilities of such men as Paul Jones, Nicholas Biddle, John Nicholson, Richard Dale, Joshua Barney, John Barry, and others, — men whose names shine out upon the Navy's roll of honor in undying glory. Let no one forget that upon this list of deathless fame stands forth the name of Count de Grasse, that French command- er who did so much, with the splendid fleet sent over by our sister nation, to help this country in achieving its independence. The careful reader of history knows that the operations of de Grasse's fleet were of powerful effect in bringing about the surrender of Lord Cornwallis and end- ing the war. All latter-day writers agree that the successful ending of hostilities was due in great " lest We forget:* 12^ measure to the sea-power of France ; and I re- gard it as particularly happy that our nation is so soon to show afresh its gratitude to France by erecting a statue to perpetuate the memory of de Grasse's compatriot on land, Count de Ro- chambeau. I have spoken briefly of our earliest Navy. To-day our Navy contains as fine ships as float upon the seas ; officers capable of upholding the valorous traditions of our service ; and the finest body of trained seamen to be found in the world, all working together to a common end, — the honor and glory of our flag and country. " Lest We Forget." David Starr Jordan, LL.D. President of Leland Stanford Jr. University. Abridged. Patriotism is the will to serve one's country, to make one's country better worth serving. It is a course of action rather than a sentiment. The shrilling of the mob is not patriotism. It is not patriotism to trample on the Spanish flag, to burn fire-crackers, or to twist the Lion's tail. The " glory " of war turns our attention from civic affairs. Neglect invites corruption. Noble and necessary as was our Civil war, we have not yet recovered from its degrading influences. The war with Spain has united at last the North and 128 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. South, we say. So at least it appears. When Fitzhugh Lee is called a Yankee, and all the haughty Lees seem proud of the designation, we may be sure that the old lines of division exist no longer. But our present solidarity shows that the nation was sound already, else a month could not have welded it together. It is twenty-eight years ago to-day that a rebel soldier who says, " I am a Southerner, I loved the South and dared for her To fight from Lookout to the sea With her proud banner over me. " stood before the ranks of the Grand Army and spoke these words : " I stand and say that you were right ; I greet you with uncovered head, Remembering many a thundrous fight When whistling death between us sped ; I clasp the hand that made my scars, I cheer the flag my foemen bore, I shout for joy to see the stars All on our common shield once more." This was more than a quarter of a century ago, and all this time the great loyal South had, patiently and unflinchingly accepted war's terri- ble results. It is not strange, then, that she shows her loyalty to-day. The " Solid South," the bugaboo of politicians, the cloak of Northern venality, has passed away forever. The warm response to American courage, in whatever " LEST WE FORGETS 1 29 section or party, shows that with all our surface divisions, we of America are one in heart. And this very solidarity should make us pause before entering upon a career of militarism. Unforget- ting, open-eyed, counting all the cost, let us make our decision. The Federal Republic, the Imperial Republic — which shall it be ? The policing of far-off islands, the maintenance of the machinery of imperialism, are petty things beside the duties which the higher freedom brings. To turn to these empty and showy affairs is to neglect our own business for the gossip of our neighbors. Such work may be a matter of necessity ; it should not be a source of pride. The political greatness of England has never lain in her navies nor the force of her arms. It has lain in her struggles for individual freedom. Not Marlborough, nor Nelson, nor Wellington is its exponent, let us say, rather, Pym and Hampden, and Gladstone and Bright. The real problems of England have always been at home. The pomp of imperialism, the display of naval power, the commercial control of India and China — all these are as the bread and circuses by which the Roman emperors held the mob from their thrones. They keep the people busy and put off the day of final reckoning. " Gild the dome of the Invalides," was Napo- leon's cynical command when he learned that the people of Paris were becoming desperate. 1 30 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO -DA Y. A foe is always at the gates of a nation with a vigorous foreign policy. The British nation is hated and feared of all nations except our own. Only her eternal vigilance keeps the vultures from her coasts. Eternal vigilance of this sort will strengthen governments, will build up nations; it will not in like degree make men. The day of the nations as nations is passing. National ambitions, national hopes, national aggrandizements ; all these may become public nuisances. Imperialism, like feudalism, belongs to the past. The men of the world as men, not as nations, are drawing closer together. The needs of commerce are stronger than the will of nations, and the final guarantee of peace and good will among men will be not " the parlia- ment of nations," but the self-control of men. Some great changes in our system are inevit- able, and belong to the course of natural progress. Against them I have nothing to say. Whatever our part in the affairs of the world, we should play it manfully. But with all this I believe that the movement toward broad dominion would be a step downward. It would be to turn from our highest purposes to drift with the current of " manifest destiny." It would be not to do the work of America, but to follow the ways of the rest of the world. " God of our fathers, known of old — Lord of our far-flung battle line — PIETY AND CIVIC VIRTUE. I3I Beneath whose awful Hand we hold Dominion over palm and pine ; Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget. The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart — Still stands Thine ancient Sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart. Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget. Far-called our navies melt away — On dune and headland sinks the fire — Lo, all our pomp of yesterday, Is one with Nineveh and Tyre ! Judge of the nations, spare us yet, Lest we forget, lest we forget." Piety and Civic Virtue. Charles Henry Parkhurst, D.D, Used by permission of Dr. Parkhurst. The fault with the mass of civic virtue is that there is not enough Christian live coal in it to make it safe to be counted on for solid effects. What a wicked man will do on election day you can tell. What a good man will do you cannot tell. Most likely he will not do anything. It is a singular fact that goodness cannot be so con- 132 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. fidently trusted as depravity can to do what is expected of it. It is not so reliable. It takes a larger consideration to prevent a bad man from casting his ballot for rum than it does to prevent a good man from going and voting against it. Average decency is not so much in earnest as average profligacy. Elections in city and State are very likely to turn on the weather. Singu- larly enough a watery day is apt to mean a rum government. Respectability looks at the ba r rometer before it steps out of doors. Decency is afraid of taking cold. Piety does not like to get its feet wet. Wickedness is amphibious and thrives in any element or in no element. There are a good many lessons which the powers of darkness are competent to teach the children of light, and that is one of them. Vice is a good deal spryer than virtue, has more staying power, can work longer without getting out of breath, and has less need of half-holidays. I know because of this, people say, you can't do anything. You can. One man can chase a thousand ; we have the Almighty's word for it. Any man can do it be he Catho- lic, Republican, or Democrat, if he have the truth on his side, dares to stand up and tell it, is distinguished by consecrated hang-to-itive- ness, and when he has been knocked down once preserves his serenity, gets up, and goes at it again. One man can chase a thousand. Let PIETY AND CIVIC VIRTUE. 1 33 our earnest, fiery citizens once get but an inkling of what citizenship means, in its truest and inner- most sense, and there is no wall of misrule too solidly constructed for it to overthrow ; no " machine " of demagogism too elaborately wrought for it to smash. There is nothing that can stand in the way of virtue on fire. A fact you can misstate, a principle you can put under a false guise, but a man you cannot down ; that is to say, if he is a man who has grit, grace, and sleeps well o' nights. There is no play about this work ; there is no fun in it. It means annoyances ; it means enmities. It is no more possible to stand up in the presence of the community and speak the truth in cold monosyllables now than it was in Jerusalem two thousand years ago. Human nature has not altered any in that time. There is not so much wickedness now, perhaps, as there was then, but what there is is just as wicked and just as malignant. If a man butts his head against a wall, he may be able to do a little something towards weakening the wall, but it will be certain to give him the headache. Action and reaction are bound to be equal. Nothing less than the steady pull of a long and devout purpose will be sufficient under those circum- stances to keep the man a-going. Men now are precisely what they were when they thrust Jeremiah into a hole and took off the 1 34 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. head of John the Baptist. But that makes not a whit of difference. Every blow tells. Wicked- ness is cowardly and Pentecostal virtue is not. That makes a huge difference. The matter of numbers does not come into the account. His- tory is not administered on the basis of arithme- tic. The declaration of Solomon that the battle is not to the strong has been justified by every age of moral, political, and military history. No cause can be called a weak cause that has vitality enough about it to make devotees out of its advocates. Philip Second could do nothing with poor little Holland because the Protestant's idea put recruits on their feet faster than Philip's mercenaries could shoot or roast the veterans. If any one anywhere is anxious to accomplish something in the way of ameliorating the condi- tion of his town or city, and asks me what he shall do, I answer in ten words : Get the facts ; state them ; stand up to them. Abraham Lincoln. Benjamin Harrison. Copyright, 1901, by the Bowen-Merrill Co. Used by per- mission. The observance of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln, which has become now so widely estab- lished, either by public law or by general custom, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 1 35 will more and more force the orators of these occasions to depart from the line of biography and incident and eulogy, and to assume the du- ties of applying to pending public questions the principles illustrated in the life, and taught in the public utterances of the man whose birth we commemorate. And, after all, we may be sure that that great, simple-hearted patriot would have wished it so. Flattery did not soothe the living ear of Lincoln. He was not unappreciative of friendship, not without ambition to be esteemed, but the over- mastering and dominant thought of his life was to be useful to his country and to his country- men. On his way to take up the already stupendous work of the presidency, he spent a night at Indianapolis. The arrival of his train was greeted by many thousands of those who had supported his candidacy. They welcomed him with huzzas, as if they would give him token of their purpose to stand by the results declared at the poles. Yet it seemed hardly to be a glad crowd, and he not to be a glad man. There was no sense of culpability — either in their hearts or in his ; no faltering; no disposition to turn back, but the hour was shadowed with forebodings. Men did not shrink, but there was that vague sense of apprehension, that unlocated expectancy of evil, which fills the air and disturbs the beasts 1 36 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. of the field when the unclouded sun is eclipsed. When the column is once started in the charge there are cheers, but there is a moment when, standing at attention, silence is king. There stood our chosen leader, the man who was to be our pilot through seas more stormy and through channels more perilous than ever the old ship passed before. He had piloted the lumbering flatboat on our western streams, but he was now to take the helm of the great ship. His experience in public office had been brief, and not conspicuous. He had no general ac- quaintance with the people of the whole country. His large, angular frame and face, his broad humor, his homely illustrations and simple ways, seemed to very many of his fellow-countrymen to portray a man and a mind that, while acute and powerful, had not that nice balance and touch of statecraft, that the perilous way before us demanded. No college of arts had opened to his struggling youth ; he had been born in a cabin, and reared among the unlettered. He was a rail-splitter, a flatboatman, a country lawyer. Yet in all these conditions and associations, he was a leader — at the railsplitting, in the rapids, at the bar, in story telling. He had a comparatively small body of admiring and at- tached friends. He had revealed himself in his debate with Douglas and in his New York speech as a man most familiar with American politics A BRA HA M LINCOLN. 1 3 7 and a profound student of our institutions, but above all, as a man of conscience — most kind in speech, and most placid in demeanor, yet dis- turbing the public peace by his insistence that those theories of human rights which we had all so much applauded in theory should be made practical. In the broad, common-sense way in which he did small things he was larger than any situation in which life had placed him. Europe did not know him. To the South and to many in the Northern States he was an uncouth jester, an ambitious upstart, a reckless disturber. He was hated by the South, not only for his principles, but for himself. The son of the cavalier, the man who felt toil to be a stain, despised this son of the people, this child of toil. He was going to Washington to meet misgivings in his own party, and to confront the fiercest, most implaca- ble and powerful rebellion of which history gives us an example. Personal dangers attended his journey. The course before him was lighted only by the lamp of duty : outside its radiance all was dark. He seemed to be conscious of all this, to be weighted by it ; but so strong was his sense of duty, so courageous his heart, so sure was he of his own high purposes and motives and of the favor of God for himself and his people, that he moved forward calmly to his appointed work ; 138 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. not with show and brag, neither with shrinking. He was yet in a large measure to win the con- fidence of men in his capacity, when the occasion was so exigent as to seem to call for one who had already won it. The selection of Mr. Seward for Secretary of State was a brave act, because Mr. Lincoln could not fail to know that for a time Mr. Seward would overshadow him in the popular estima- tion ; and a wise one, because Mr. Seward was in the highest degree qualified for the great and delicate duties of the office. He was distinguished from the abolition lead- ers by the fairness and kindliness with which he judged the South and the slaveholder. He was opposed to human slavery, not because some masters were cruel, but upon reasons that kind- ness to the slave did not answer. "All men" included the black man. Liberty is the law of nature. The human enactment cannot pass the limits of the State ; God's law embraces crea- tion. Mr. Lincoln had faith in time, and time has justified his faith. If the panorama of the years from '6i to '65 could have been unrolled before the eyes of his countrymen would they have said, would he have said, that he was ade- quate for the great occasion ? And yet as we look back over the story of the Civil War he is revealed to us standing above all men of that ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 139 epoch in his capacity and adaptation to the duties of the presidency. It does not seem to be God's way to give men preparation and fitness and to reveal them until the hour strikes. Men must rise to the situa- tion. The storage batteries that are to furnish the energy for these great occasions God does not connect until the occasion comes. The Civil War called for a president who had faith in time, for his country as well as for him- self ; who could endure the impatience of others and bide his time. A man who could by a strong but restrained diplomatic correspondency hold off foreign intermeddlers and at the same time lay the sure basis for the Geneva award, a man who could in all his public utterances, while maintaining the authority of the law and the just rights of the national government, breathe an undertone of yearning for the misguided and rebellious ; a man who could hold the war and the policy of the government to its original pur- pose — the restoration of the States without the destruction of slavery — until public sentiment was ready to support a proclamation of emanci- pation ; a man who could win and hold the love of the soldier and of the masses of the people ; a man who could be just without pleasure in the severities of justice, who loved to forgive and pardon. Mr. Lincoln loved the " plain people " out of I4-0 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. whose ranks be came, but not with a class love. He never pandered to ignorance or sought ap- plause by appeals to prejudice. The equality of men in rights and burdens, justice to all, a government by all the people, for all the people, was his thought — no favoritism in enactment or administration — the general good. He had the love of the masses and he won it fairly, not by art or trick. He could, therefore, admonish and restrain with authority. He was a man who could speak to all men and be heard. Would there were more such ! There is great need of men now who can be heard both in the directors' meetings and in the labor assembly. Qualities of heart and mind combined to make a man who has won the love of mankind. He stands like a great lighthouse to show the way of duty to all his countrymen and to send afar a beam of courage to those who beat against the winds. We do him reverence. We bless forever the memory of Lincoln. Commerce. Henry Van Dyke, D.D., LL.D. THERE is a nobility of trade which has its traditions of glory, its laws of honor, its history of usefulness, and its purpose of beneficence to COMMERCE. 141 all mankind. There is an order of the Golden Fleece to which the world owes its greatest dis- coveries and its largest advances in civilization. It was founded in the palmy days of Greece, but it has survived to the present day, and we need not look far to find its knights of labor, of ad- venture, of honor, and of generous succor to the oppressed. Who sneers at commerce ? Is it the lover of liberty ? Let him remember that the grandest battles for freedom have been fought by mer- cantile nations. It was commercial Holland that defied the tyranny of Spain ; it was the merchant- men of England that shattered the Armada on the stormy waters of the channel ; it was a band of trading colonies that set up the standard of liberty in the new world ; and but for the freely offered wealth — and the nobly sacrificed lives — of our mercantile classes, I leave it to you to say, whether our new Republic would not now be dis- membered and dishonored. Who sneers at commerce ? Is it the devotee of learning? Let him remember that it was the traders of Phoenicia who gave letters to Greece ; it was the maritime states of Greece who adorned the world with poetry, and philosophy, and art ; it was the age of England's commercial suprem- acy which brought the highest glory to her uni- versities ; it is in great part the liberality of merchants which has established on our shores 142 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. these great institutions of learning, — Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell. Let him remember the little commercial city of Leyden, and her imperishable example. For when her heroic siege was ended — when she had won her unparalleled victories against armies, ships, canon, pestilence, flood, and famine — when the Prince of Orange in his unbounded gratitude came and asked her to choose her reward — that little city of Dutch merchants chose not gold, nor freedom from taxes, but a university, and the reward of her defense became the light of Europe. Who sneers at commerce ? Is it the friend of peace ? Let him remember that commerce has created and established the system of inter- national law ; that there is no spot of land to- day upon which the rights of property and person are more secure than upon the high seas. Let him remember that " every ship that sails the ocean is a pledge of peace to the extent of its value ; every white sail a more appropriate sym- bol of peace than the olive-branch itself." Who sneers at commerce? Is it the preacher of Christianity ? Let him remember that it was the trade of Thessalonica which caused the Gospel to sound forth from that city into all the world ; it was the enterprise of commerce which opened the closed gates of China, and Japan, and Corea to the missionary, and made possible those triumphant advances of Christianity of which we OUR NATIONAL SAFEGUARDS. 1 43 are beginning to hear the first footfalls, and for whose completion we must look to the conse- crated wealth of mercantile communities. Let the Church understand her opportunity, and her task. Convert commerce and you have found " the Knight-errant of the Cross." Convince those who reap the honorable gains of trade that their wealth has its sacred obligations, as well as its great privileges, that the richest man is not he who has the most money, but he who makes the best use of what he has, that great possessions are a royal trust from God to be employed for the benefit of mankind, and then the noble order of true commerce will become the transforming and uplifting power of our modern civilization. Our National Safeguards. Hon. Chauncey M. Depew. Contributed by the author. It requires only a brief contemplation of American battle-fields to illustrate the madness or the idiocy of the statesmen who would frighten us by the dangers which they claim threaten our security or peace from foreign assault or foreign invasion. Thirty thousand American soldiers conquered Mexico, with twelve millions 144 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. of inhabitants. It was American bravery, intelli- gence and dash. Three millions of people threw off the yoke of the British Government, though England was mistress of the seas and the arbiter of Europe. Hooker's men stormed the almost impregnable heights of Lookout Mountain, and won a victory above the clouds, while Pickett's brigade of the Confederate Army hurled them- selves with unavailing valor upon the breastworks and died under the murderous fire of the batter- ies of Meade at Gettysburg. There are in the United States to-day a reserve of ten millions of fighting men. They are the same stock, with the same bravery and the same unconquerable spirit as those who fought from Bunker Hill to York- town, who won the victory under Jackson at New Orleans, who followed Scott and Taylor into Mexico, and stormed the heights of Chapul- tepec, and marched triumphantly into the City of the Montezumas. They are of the same stock and spirit, the same courage and fearlessness of death as the soldiers who won the admiration of the French and English officers on the staffs of General Grant and General Lee in those conflicts of the Civil War, where five hundred thousand men died in battle. Those soldiers require no standing army for their safety, no expensive, exhausting and threatening militarism for the salvation or the defense of their country. They will take care of that themselves. It is for us to O UR NA TIONA L SA FE G UA RDS. 1 4 5 preserve the glorious heritage for which these men died or were wounded, or are now maimed and helpless in our midst. Our duty is to care tenderly and piously for the survivors of the Grand Army, and to carry out in policy, in prin- ciple and in practice the ideas for which they fought. Their triumph gave to the Republic the new South. It substituted for the old oligarchy and slavery the superb development which comes with individual enterprise and free labor. The new South is redeeming its wildernesses for pop- ulation and homes ; it is reclaiming its waste lands for the varied productions of its fructifying climate. It is bringing out the exhaustless treasures of its mountains and hills ; it is estab- lishing manufactories, founding cities and adding its quota to the majesty, the power and the greatness of the United States. We must be true and faithful in safeguarding the ballot-box and the right of the citizen to deposit his vote and have it honestly recorded. We must be courageous in fighting the madness of the hour or the errors which increase with business depression and hard times, and go with our party into temporary defeat, if need be, for the preservation of the national credit, and those principles of sound finance and practice, common with the commercial nations of the world, and which alone can keep us solvent, prosperous and progressive. From Columbus to the Mayflower, I46 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. from the Mayflower to Washington and the Declaration of Independence, from Washington and the Declaration of Independence to Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation are the stepping-stones of American liberty and modern development. The crowning blessing of this majestic evolution is that American citizenship which is the common heritage of us all. Social Discontent. Hon. John William Griggs. Used by permission of the author. This great country, the United States of America, has grown into an independent nation. It has advanced and extended along the lines of progress and prosperity until the seven wonders of the world have been lost sight of and forgotten in the thousand greater wonders of this industrial age. Education has become a common provision of every State for every child of the Republic. Intelligence has increased ; reason and reasonableness, the ability to take right views of things has become more universal among this people than among the people of any other land. The average of comfort and prosperity is higher among all classes in this SOCIAL DISCONTENT. 1 47 country than could be found at any other age of the world and in any other land upon the surface of the earth. And yet there are complaints, there are dis- contents, there are dissatisfactions, and gloomy minds think they see, in these, evidences and signs that there is coming a social revolution, an overturning of our system of popular government, a substitution for it of some plan whereby, by legal enactments, all citizens of the Republic can be made comfortable and rich, without regard to fortune, or ability, or frugality, or merit. In one sense discontent is a good thing. It is the opposite of self-satisfaction. It is a good thing to appreciate that we have not done our best and then try to do it. It is a good thing to understand that we have not made the most of our opportunities. In this sense discontent is the spur of ambition, the incentive to better work, the mountain of progress up which from height to height, civilization has climbed to where now with shining face she stands still pointing upward to heights unknown. But there is another kind of discontent, born of an inclination to jealousy and envy, that seeks not to repair its mistakes, nor to profit by its failures, nor to build up, but to tear down. There is among many a sense of hopelessness over hope- less misfortune, and with these, it is more to pity than to blame. But, after all, in these discon- 148 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y. tents, there is a menace to the Republic. They afford opportunities for the demagogue and cheap candidate for public office. Glory to the Ameri- can people. They cannot be fooled all of the time nor some of the time. They are too level- headed, too intelligent, too patriotic to be caught by appeals of the demagogue and social revolu- tionist, to the dictates of sentiments of envy, hatred and malice. There are some ways by which it is best for us to minimize the danger we find in these discon- tents. The first remedy is the one that is to be ever applied — education. Reduce the percentage of illiteracy. Let the public schools teach not only reading and writing, but let the public schools teach all the principles of American popular government. Let us go back to the days in which the copybook bore the text taken from Poor Richard — " Industry and Frugality lead to wealth," or " Who by the plow would thrive, himself must either hold or drive." There was not anything said in those days about legislating the boy into wealth or comfort or ease, especially at the expense of anybody else. Then let us have more mutual sympathy and confidence between all classes and conditions of men. The man who works for wages day by day is our equal in rights and is our equal at the ballot box. Very often he has, generally he has, as high instincts, as loyal and true a heart, as SOCIAL DISCONTENT. 149 his employer. There is no reason why his employer or the candidate for office or anybody else should make friends with him only at election time. Be his friend all the year round. Show him that you sympathize with him as a fellow citizen. This is not a condescension, it is his right. It is not altruism. But let there be confidence between men that earn wages and men that pay wages. Let them meet together on a plane of political equality, and they will learn to respect the employer and the employer will learn to respect them. Then, let us stop making citizens out of unworthy material. We welcome all those that come from over the sea, men of merit and worth and proper instinct, who want to build and work among us. We do not want those who only come here to tear down and destroy. We have had the gates wide open. They have been coming in — all sorts, all conditions and all beliefs. Let us shut those gates and open them hereafter only to men of merit with right instincts. The law of the land declares that no subject of any foreign government shall be naturalized unless he can prove, to the satisfaction of the court, that he lias been well attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States. How that provision has been ignored ! Why, we have taken into citizenship with us thousands of men who not only are not attached to the principles 1 50 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. of the Constitution of the United States, who not only do not know what those principles are, but who hold principles diametrically opposed to it. Now let us see that America suffers no longer from the surfeited feast of foreign Anar- chists and Socialists and Revolutionists ; give us good men and true who will not impede our industry and keep out those that tend to des- troy industry. And then let every citizen go into politics. Not for what there is in it but for the good of his country. Rally round the flag and keep on rallying ! It is a very old saying but can never be too often repeated, that " Eternal vigilance is the prize of liberty." William McKinley. G. Stanley Hall, LL. D. President of Clark University. Contributed to this collec- tion by the author. When Rome was declining to its fall, and Otho, the best of her later emperors, died, strong men slew themselves from sheer grief, pathos and despair, for the hope of the world seemed extinguished in a gathering twilight of all the gods and men. But for our ship of state, acute as it is, this sudden shock is ' of the wave WILLIAM McKINLE Y. 1 5 I and not the rock,' for God reigns, the govern- ment is safe, and we shall press on our upward way. The country we love is not a mere geo- graphical term ; it is more than all our rich fields, prairies, hills, coasts or populous cities. It is more than a corporation, or trading guild, with its manifold and prosperous marts and all its trade and commerce. Our fatherland is also a State invisible, not made with hands, a great treasury of golden deeds. Its moral wealth and worth are enriched by the blood of every soldier or martyr for a century and a quarter. It is made more precious by every act of devotion, heroism or self-sacrifice in its behalf. Every vote with intelligence and conviction behind it : every tax fairly levied, ungrudgingly paid and wisely expended ; every public service that takes time and strength from our private affairs ; every effort for municipal, educational, moral or social reform, enhances the common wealth, the store- house of accumulated virtue, makes citizenship and country better and mean more, makes a purer and more quickening atmosphere for chil- dren to grow up in and for us to live and die in. Man is pre-eminently a political creature, a State builder, and true and real politics is, as Aristotle well said, his highest vocation. Our great Republic, the highest expression of human- ity, with all its hopes and all its fears which his- 152 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DAY. tory has yet seen, is worthy of the very highest earthly love, service and devotion of man ; and our flag that now happily hangs in or waves be- side every schoolhouse in the land, that has floated in every battle since Lexington, which has been torn with shot and shell, and led every forlorn hope that our soldiers have so often turned into victory, is the emblem of a meaning ever fuller and more sacred, that says to every citizen wherever he is, that he is not alone, but part of the great organic whole, which men have died to make free, even as Christ died to make men holy. If then ours is the noblest of nations, best fitted to usher in a higher type of man, anarchism, which is well defined as ' ignorance set on fire,' and which would destroy all this and all govern- ment without which man becomes a beast, is blackest here where institutions are best. Bred and maddened by despotism, even its desperate program should lose its fell momentum here and turn from mere negation to some positive or colonial scheme where its vagaries would grow harmless. In all the sad annals of assassination, a monster, who almost in the act of grasping the friendly hand which our land in the person of its benign Chief holds out to the vilest, shoots down our Captain Great Heart, as if he were an outlaw, adds to politics a new shudder of horror and pathos and commits a crime without a name, WILLIAM McKINLE Y. 1 5 3 and all direct incitement to such butchery, legisla- tion should hasten to brand with the infamous punishment it deserves. As the office of President grows in responsi- bility, it not only needs more protection, but is surer to enlarge the man who holds it and to bring out the best and greatest possibilities of his nature and repress all that is small or bad, as indeed it has always done in our past, for no in- cumbent has ever disgraced it. Under the guid- ance of him we mourn, we have secured sound money and a business prosperity greater than ever before. We were already the great nation of the new world, but now in the irresistible logic of events we have become a potent factor in all the larger problems of the old. Before, our statesmen pondered our own history and per- haps that of the mother country, but to guide the genius and destinies of our greater Republic, they must now study the history and politics of the world. Our moral influence had long been profound and transforming, but we have added to this new and more material international re- sponsibilities and opportunities in commerce and politics as we take a higher seat in the world's great parliament. Whether it is hard or easy, we must now in a measure forget the things that are behind, while we strive to realize the grand Stoic motto and accept the inevitable with joy. For we now live in a nation greater than any of I 54 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. the founders of our government foresaw, and even their wisdom must be transcended, warmly as its lessons must ever be cherished. Pheidippides, the valiant warrior chief of ancient Greece, after a great victory, ran to the Acropolis, outstripping all others in the race ; and in the very act of shouting " rejoice for Athens is now free and great," fell dead, ex- hausted by his labor, by a special favor of the gods, who would permit him no decline, but, for reward, let him die at the zenith of his power. So our leader had just recounted almost with his last words the achievements of his stewardship, that made our country greater and happier, even on the dreadful brink of the red grave to which he sank, exhausted perhaps by his labors be- yond the power of recovery from his wounds, and it may be by special favor of the gods. Perhaps his work was done. Can we better keep his memory warm in our hearts and green in our lives than by now pledging each other, when a touch of sorrow has made us all akin, that we will henceforth love and serve our native land more devoutly ; that, while we can and will abate none of our convictions, our partisanship shall henceforth be without the sting of personal ran- cor ; that we will be mindful that bitterness may inflame the weak or degenerate to violence ; that this day shall be forever sacred to the common good for which our government and civilization THE MAN WITH HIS HA T IN HIS HAND. 1 5 5 stand ; and to that deeper unity that underlies all differences of calling, class, party and creed, and which makes all men everywhere brethren, because children of the same God? If we do this henceforth, it is only ashes they bury at Canton, and the soul of our fallen chieftain will go marching on through the ages ; it will abide with us as a diffusing power that makes for civic righteousness, and harmony and order will be no less insured than liberty and progress. " The Man with His Hat in His Hand." Clark Howell. Abridged. The Twenty-ninth Regiment of United States Volunteers, was quartered at Atlanta, Georgia. They had just received orders for their trip of 10, ooo miles. The troops were formed in full regi- mental parade in the presence of thousands of spec- tators, among whom were anxious and weeping mothers, loving sisters and sweethearts, and a vast multitude of others who had gone to look, possibly for the last time, upon departing friends. Of the enlisted men a great percentage were from Georgia, most of them from simple farm- houses and the quiet and unpretentious hearth- stones which abound in the rural communities. I56 BEST AMERICAN OR A 7 IONS OF TO-DA V. A few had seen service in Cuba, but most of them had volunteered as raw recruits from the farm. There were sturdy and rugged mountain- eers from the Blue Ridge counties — strong, steady and intrepid, with the simplicity charac- teristic of the mountain fastnesses from which they came. There were boys from the wire grass — plain, unassuming and unaffected, their eyes lighted with the fire of determination and their hearts beating in unison with the loyalty of their purpose. The men moved like machines. The regiment of raw recruits had become in a few months a command of trained and disciplined soldiers. The very air was fraught with the impressive significance of the scene, which had its counterpart in many of the States where patriots enlisted faster than the muster roll was called. Leaning against a tree was a white-haired mountaineer who looked with intent eyes and with an expression of the keenest sympathy upon the movements of the men in uniform. His gaze was riveted on the regiment and the frequent applause of the visiting multitude fell apparently unheard on his ears. The regiment had finished its evolutions ; the commissioned officers had lined themselves to make their regu- lation march to the front for their report and dismissal. The bugler had sounded the signal ; the artillery had belched its adieu as the king of THE MAN WITH HIS HA T IN HIS HAND. 157 day withdrew beyond the hills ; the halyard had been grasped, and the flag slowly fell, saluting the retiring sun. As the flag started its descent, the scene was characterized by a solemnity that seemed sacred in its intensity. From the regi- mental band there floated upon the stillness of the autumn evening the strains of the " Star Spangled Banner." Instinctively and apparently unconsciously, the old man by the tree removed his hat from his head and held it in his hand in reverential recognition until the flag had been furled and the last strain of the national anthem had been lost in the resonant tramp of the troops as they left the field. What a picture that was — the man with his hat in his hand, as he stood uncovered during that impressive ceremony ! I moved involunta- rily toward him, and, impressed with his reveren- tial attitude, I asked him where he was from. " I am," said he, " from Pickens County ; " and in casual conversation it developed that this raw mountaineer had come to Atlanta to say farewell to an only son who stood in line before him, and upon whom his tear-bedimmed eyes might then be resting for the last time. The silent ex- hibition of patriotism and loyalty had been prompted by a soul as rugged, but as placid as the great blue mountains which gave it birth, and by an inspiration kindled from the very bosom of nature itself. I 58 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. There was the connecting link between the hearthstone and the capitol ! There was the citizen who, representing the only real, substan- tial element of the nation's reserve strength — " the citizen standing in the doorway of his home, contented on his threshold " had answered his country's call — the man of whom Henry Grady so eloquently said : " He shall save the Republic when the drum tap is futile and the barracks are exhausted." In him was duty typified, and in him slumbered the germ of sac- rifice. There was that in the spontaneous action of the man that spoke of hardships to be endur- ed and dangers to be dared for country's sake ; there was that in his reverential attitude that said, even though the libation of his heart's blood should be required in far off lands, his life would be laid down as lightly as his hat was lifted to his country's call. Denied by age the privilege of sharing the hardships and the dangers of the comrades of his boy, no rule could regulate his patriotic ardor, no limitation could restrain the instincts of his homage. The Cure for Anarchism. Lyman Abbott, D.D. Contributed by Dr. Abbott to this collection. WHENEVER laws are enacted which violate the divine laws of life, they breed Anarchy. Anarch- THE CURE FOR ANARCHISM. 1 59 ism is always a revolt against unjust and unequal laws. Let the legislators recognize the funda- mental truth that what is an injury to one is an injury to all, and what is a benefit to the many is a benefit to all ; let them seek only the welfare of all by their legislation ; let them recognize the truth that law is divine and to set the Nation against it is to invite disaster and to conform the Nation to it is to insure prosperity, and we shall have little cause to ask, What shall we do with Anarchy ? — it will disappear of itself. On the contrary, let legislators legislate for special classes, let them encourage by their legislation the spoliation of the many for the benefit of the few, let them protect the rich and forget the poor, let them estimate the prosperity of the Nation by the accumulation of its wealth, not by its distribution, let them intrench an industrial system which means long hours, and little leisure, and small rewards for the many, and accumula- tion of unimagined wealth for the few, and men in the bitterness of their hearts will cry out, If this is government, let us away with it. But just and equal laws will not be enough without just and equal execution of those laws. Let the courts delay to administer justice, let the rich be enabled to keep the poor waiting till their patience and their purses are alike exhausted, let crimes go unpunished until they are forgotten, let the petty gambler be arrested but the rich l6o BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. and prosperous one go free, and Anarchism will demand the abolition of all law because it sees in law only an instrument of injustice. The place in which to attack Anarchism is where the offenses grow which alone make Anarchism possible. Let us secure the just, speedy, and impartial administration of law, let us elect legislators who seek honestly to conform human legislation to the divine laws of the social order, without fear or favor, let us teach in our Churches and our schools and through the press the divine origin, the divine sanctity, and the divine authority of law, and let us from this van- tage-ground meet with fair-minded reason the wild cries of men who have been taught by the monstrous misuse of law to hate all law both human and divine, and our question will be solved for us, because both Anarchy and Anar- chists will disappear from American society. The way to counteract hostility to law is to make laws which deserve to be respected. Expansion. Hon. Henry L. Watterson. The traditional stay-at-home and mind-your- own-business policy laid down by Washington EXPANSION. l6l was wise for a weak and struggling nation, and, if it could be adhered to, would be wise for every people. But each of the centuries has its own tale of progress to tell, each raises up its own problems to be solved. The difference between a scattered population, fringing the east Atlantic seaboard, and eighty millions of people occupying and traversing the Continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific, is too great to admit of contrast. As no preceding cycle the intervening century has revolutionized the world. Another century may witness the transfer of human ambitions and activities from Europe and America to Asia and Africa. The Pacific, and not the Atlantic, may become the washbasin of the universe. Can the United States stand apart and aside while these movements of mankind, like a running stream, pass them by, an isolated and helpless mass of accumulated and corrupting riches ? We could not if we would and we should not if we could. We must adapt ourselves to the changed order. We must make a new map. The vista, as it opens to our sight, is not so great as would have been the vista of Texas and California, Florida and Alaska to the eye of Washington. For all his wisdom the father of his country could not foresee electricity, nor estimate the geographic contractions it would bring. Already the old world is receding. Another world is coming into view. The statesmanship of the twentieth cen- 1 62 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. tury, must address itself to this and will be largely constructive in its character. The United States from now on is destined to be a world power. Henceforth its foreign policy will need to be completely reconstructed. From a nation of shopkeepers we become a nation of warriors. We escape the menace and peril of socialism and agrarianism, as England has escaped them, by a policy of colonization and conquest. From a provincial huddle of petty sovereignties, held together by a rope of sand, we rise to the dignity and prowess of an Imperial Republic in- comparably greater than Rome. It is true that we exchange domestic dangers for foreign dangers, but in every direction we multiply the opportunities of the people. We risk Caesarism, certainly ; but even Caesarism is preferable to anarchism. We risk wars, but a man has but one time to die, and, either in peace or war, he is not likely to die until his time comes. In short, anything is better than the pace we were going before these present forces were started into life. Already the young manhood of the country is as a goodly brand snatched from the burning and given a perspective replete with noble deeds and elevating ideas. USES OF ED UCA TION FOR B US I NESS 1 63 Uses of Education for Business. Charles William Eliot, LL.D. President of Harvard University. BEFORE we can talk together to advantage about the value of education in business, we ought to come to a common understanding about the sort of education we mean and the sort of business. Nobody doubts that primary and grammar school training are useful to everybody ; or that high school training is advantageous for a clerk, salesman, commercial traveler, or skilled workman ; or that technical or scientific school training is useful to an engineer, chemist, elec- trician, mechanician, or miner. Our question is, of what use is the education called " liberal " to a man of business? The education called liberal has undergone a great expansion during our generation, and is now, in the best institutions, thoroughly conformed to modern uses. All universities worthy of the name — even the oldest and most conservative — now supply a broad and free range of studies, which includes the ancient subjects, but establishes on a perfect equality — with them the new and vaster subjects of modern languages and literature, history, political science, and natural science. We must not think of the liberal education of to-day as dealing with a dead past — with dead languages, buried peoples, and 164 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y. exploded philosophies ; on the contrary, every- thing which universities now teach is quick with life and capable of application to modern uses. They teach indeed the languages and literature of Judea, Greece, and Rome; but it is because those literatures are instinct with eternal life. They teach mathematics, but it is the mathema- tics mostly created within the lifetime of the older men of this generation. In teaching Eng- lish, French, and German, they are teaching the modern vehicles of all learning — just what Latin was in mediaeval times. As to history, political science, and natural science, the subjects them- selves, and all the methods by which they are taught, may properly be said to be new within a century. Liberal education is not to be justly regarded as something dry, withered, and effete ; it is as full of sap as the cedars of Lebanon. And what sort of business do we mean ? Surely the larger sorts of legitimate and hon- orable business ; that business which is of advan- tage to both buyer and seller, and to producer, distributor and consumer alike, whether individ- uals or nations, which makes common some use- ful thing which has been rare, or makes accessible to the masses good things which have been kept within reach only of the few. That great art of production and exchange which through the centuries has increased human comfort, cherished peace, fostered the fine arts, developed the preg- USES OF ED UCA TION FOR B US I NESS. 1 6 5 nant principle of associated action, and promoted both public security and public property. With this understanding of what we mean by education on the one hand and business on the other, let us see if there can be any doubt as to the nature of the relations between them. The business man in large affairs, needs keen observa- tion, a quick mental grasp of new subjects, and a wide range of knowledge. Whence come these powers and attainments — either to the educated or to the uneducated — save through practice and study ? But education is only early systematic practice and study under guidance. The object of all good education is to develop just these powers — accuracy in observation, quickness and certainty in seizing upon the main points of a new subject, and discrimination in separating the trivial from the important in great masses of facts. This is what liberal education does for the physi- cian, the lawyer, the minister, and the scientist. This is what it can do for the man of business ; to give a mental power is one of the main ends of the higher education. Is not active business a field in which mental power finds full play ? Again education imparts knowledge, and who has greater need to know economics, history, and natural science than the man of large business? Further, liberal education develops a sense of right, duty, and honor; and more and more, in the modern world, large business rests on recti- 1 66 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA K tude and honor, as well as on good judgment. Education does this through the contemplation and study of the moral ideals of our race ; not in drowsiness or dreaminess or in mere vague enjoyment of poetic and religious abstractions, but in the resolute purpose to apply spiritual ideals to actual life. When the universities hold up before their youth the great Semitic ideals which were em- bodied in the Decalogue, they mean that those ideals should be applied in politics. When they teach their young men that Asiatic ideal of un- known antiquity, the Golden Rule, they mean that their deciples, shall apply it to business ; when they inculcate that comprehensive maxim of Christian ethics, " Ye are all members of one another," they mean that this moral principle is applicable to all human relations, whether be- tween individuals, families, states, or nations. Again, higher education has always made great account of the power of expression in speech and writing, whence has arisen an opinion that liberal education must be less useful to the man of busi- ness than to the lawyer, or minister, because the business man has less need than they of this power. Have we not all seen, in recent years, that leading men of business, particularly those who act for corporations, have great need of a high- ly trained mind of clear and convincing expres- sion ? Business men need in speech and writing, USES OF EDUCATION FOR BUSINESS. 1 67 all the Roman terseness and French clearness ; the graces and elegancies of literary style they may indeed dispense with, but not with the greater qualities of compactness, accuracy, and vigor. It is a liberal education indeed which teaches a youth of fair parts and reasonable in- dustry to speak and write his native language strongly, accurately, and persuasively. That one attainment is sufficient reward for the whole long course of twelve years spent in liberal study. But you say : This is all theory ; what are the facts with regard to the connection between higher education and successful business life ? Among the young men who have graduated from Harvard University within forty years there have been many cases of rapid advancement from the bottom to the top of the business corporations in great variety. A young man leaves college at twenty-three and goes into a cotton mill at the bottom ; and in four years he is superintendent. Another lands in a Western city, three days after his graduation, without a dollar, and without a friend in the city, and ten years afterward he is the owner of the best establishment for printing books in that city. A young man six years out of college is superintendent of one of the largest woolen mills in the United States. Another a little older is the manager of one of the most im- portant steel works in the country. These are but striking examples of a large class of facts. 1 68 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y Successful business men themselves give no doubtful answer to the questions we are consid- ering. Successful business men with the rarest exceptions, wish their sons to be educated to the highest point the sons can reach. No matter whether the father be himself an educated man or not, when his success in business has given him the means of educating his children he is sure to desire that they receive a liberal educa- tion whether they are going into business or not. Finally, liberal education is an end in itself apart from all its utilities and applications. When we teach a child to read, our primary aim is not to enable it to decipher a way-bill or a re- ceipt, but to kindle its imagination, enlarge its vision, and open for it the avenues of knowledge. The same is true of a liberal education in its utmost reach. Its chief objects for the individ- ual are development, inspiration, and exaltation ; the practical advantages which flow from it are incidental, not paramount. For the community the institutions of higher education do a like service. They bring each successive generation of youth up to levels of knowledge and righteousness which the preced- ing generation reached in their maturity. Public comfort, ease and wealth are doubtless promoted by them ; but their true and sufficient ends are knowledge and righteousness. PEACEMAKERS OF BLESSED MEMORY. 1 69 Peacemakers of Blessed Memory. Adapted. Gen. Lew Wallace. THERE is such a thing as an honest mistake. If the Confederate soldier was in the wrong, it was where one does a wrong believing it right ; and as a rule the distinguishing mark of such mistakes is that their evil consequences strike hardest at home. But in this case, saying that the unfortunates were wrong in believing they had a cause worthy the smile of heaven, one thing at least is never to be overlooked — they died for it. Can a man furnish better proof of his honesty ? Ah, no ! And instead of spitting on his grave, I would libate it with a cup mixed in equal parts of sorrow and admiration. " There's rosemary, that's for remembrance." Remem- brance ! Of what ? Not the cause, but the hero- ism it invoked. I like that idea of introspection. It is worth converting into a habit. Our souls, if we may trust the preachers, can become unclean. Not that they contaminate themselves. How con- venient, could we now and then take them out and give them a cleansing ! But as this is beyond us, the next best thing, I suggest, is to turn a bright light in upon them — much as the doctors do when they would see down our throats. If in I 7° BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. a trial of the suggestion — as well here and now — you should discover the ethereal part of you spotted with hate, not of the dead, but of living Confederates — the distinction, as I conceive it, is so easy as to be more than possible — make haste and get rid of it. There lived a man who left behind him a life which will serve to the last clock stroke of time as an all-round examplar of the better qualities of our nature. In the heat of trials which would have burned love of his fellows out of other men, he practiced a patience never before exemplified but in one instance, and dealt his enemies such exceeding charity that they were none the less his friends. Out of obscurity he arose as the sun rises, and presently his light was the property of the whole world ; insomuch that there are yet millions of men, the same whom he brought up with him, only out of a deeper darkness, and their children, who think it no harm to worship him. He proved the feasibility of self-education, and that, once attained, it is of peculiar excel- lence in that it leaves the genius of the individual unshorn of its originality, and free to destroy or conserve according to its inspirations. He was a burthen bearer from his birth, and the burthens were girt upon his spirit even more than his body ; yet while they crooked the body, and bent it earthward, and left it gnarled and knotted and ugly, the spirit grew in strength and beauty, and PEA CEMA KERS OF BLESSED MEMOR Y. 1 7 1 was at no time so strong and beautiful as in the hour an assassin blew it out. And great was the need of strength, for the burthens were many, the very heaviest of them being the Confederacy of which I am talking. How that war wrung his heart ! What sorrow, at times, what agony, it gave him ! Think of the refrain ringing through his windows for four long years, " We are com- ing, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more." And where were the singers going? And to what ? Spare me answering. He knew. Yet in all that time there was not an hour in which he did not recognize the Confederates, even those in arms, as his countrymen. Do you ask the proof. Here it is. In the archives of the Government there are many judg- ments of death, but not one warrant bearing his signature. Tell me now, you whom I may induce to study and weigh the reasons for your unwillingness to reconcile with your old antagon- ists in gray, what were the provocations they gave you compared with those they gave him ? Aye, wherein are you so loftily perched above forgiveness, and so contemptuous of its divin- ity, better, nobler, more godly than Abraham Lincoln? I knew another man whose dealings with Con- federates after surrender make him worthy a place in the golden gallery of American exem- plars. Thirteen thousand of them yielded them- 172 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. selves to him at Donelson ; 37,000 at Vicksburg ; and at Appomattox all that remained of the Confederacy, army, navy, citizens, government, asked terms of him. Practically they were at his mercy. If thirsty for blood, he could have gorged himself. Never had any man, at least on this continent, so many vials full of punish- ment for pouring out on the heads of enemies as Ulysses S. Grant. You know the story. Liter- ally he fed the hungry, clothed the naked, and set the revolted States on their feet by return- ing their people to them. Such are the records of the two men, one a civilian, the other a soldier, both evolutions of the great war, both foremost among the foremost of the world. The Keys to Success. Edward William Bok. Used by permission. Abridged. The successful life calls for certain sacrifices, and this especially applies to a young man's social life. Now some young men have a dangerous belief that employers have no jurisdiction over their evening hours. But the fact is that an employer has some rights in this respect. He has a perfect right to expect that his employee shall not only carry himself respectably in his THE KEYS TO SUCCESS. 1 73 social life, but that he shall temper his social habits to business demands. The average young man is very apt to go to extremes in social life. On the one hand there are those who so immerse themselves in business that they shut out every social pleasure. They get so weighted down with the serious problems of life that they become impatient with the lighter side of living as being frothy and silly, and the man who allows himself to get so thor- oughly wedded to business that he can see no good in the social life is his own worst enemy. He becomes unprofitable to himself, and uninter- esting to other people. He stagnates. Nothing in the world can make a man more thoroughly selfish and so forgetful of the rights and com- forts of those in his home as too close an appli- cation to business. Every young man must have a certain amount of social life. It is good for him. His nature demands it. We must play in order to work better. The mind needs a change of thought just as the body needs a change of raiment. A wholesome social life broadens a young man ; it rounds him out. But, on the other hand, there are young men who go to excess in their social life, and this is just as deadly as the other is stagnating. Social pleasures are like everything else in this world ; their dangers lie not in their use but in their abuse. 1 74 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. No mind can be fresh in the morning that has been kept at a tension the night before by late hours. A young man at twenty-five needs more sleep than does a man at fifty. It is his building time. Any young man, who, except on rare occasions, grants himself less than eight hours sleep robs himself of just so much vitality. Asleep by eleven and up by seven is a course which hundreds of successful men have laid out for themselves. A man to be a factor in the busi- ness world must have a fresh mind and a clear brain, and that is only possible when he gives them proper rest. Taking a young man to task for questionable pleasures always brings up the story of the young English curate who was censured by his bishop for going fox-hunting. It seemed to the bishop to be too worldly. The young minister replied that his fox-hunting did not seem to him any more worldly than did the fact of the bishop's presence at a large masquerade ball a few even- ings before. The bishop explained that while it was true he had been visiting at the house where the ball had been taking place, he had not been within three rooms of the dancing any time during the evening. " Oh, well, if it comes to that," said the young minister, " I never get within three fields of the hounds." There is no sense in saying to an active, healthy young fellow that he must sit at home five THE KEYS TO SUCCESS. 175 nights of the week and read a book, and the other secular night go out and take a nice little walk. He won't do it. It's unnatural. Now young men often ask what are the social pleasures and indulgences which seriously affect a young man's success ? A specific answer can not be given. No one set of rules can be applied to all. An exhilarating pleasure to one is often a positive injury to another. The only rule by which a young man can live in his social life is this : Any social pleasure which affects a young man's health, which clouds his mind, from which he rises the next morning tired rather than refreshed, is bad for him and affects his success. Good health is the foundation of all possible success in life ; affect the one and you affect the other. If a pleasure refreshes and elevates your mind and body and you feel better for it the next morning, that is a pleasure good for you. Only one point of self-indulgence do I wish this evening to dwell upon in a specific manner, and that is indulgence in alcoholic liquors. When I speak of this question I take it entirely away from any religious or moral standpoint. To me it is not a question of whether it is right or wrong for a young man to indulge in spirituous liquors. It is rather can he do it than should he do it. Is it wise, rather than is it wrong. And I say to him plainly and directly that he cannot do it. Sim- ply take the hard, common sense view of it. The 1 76 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA V. temporary exhilaration which is supposed to come from alcohol is unnecessary to a young man in good health. Therefore it can do him absolutely no good. But it may do him harm. The chances are that it will. Arid no- young man can afford to take a single risk or chance in the morning of a business career. He needs the unhampered use of all his powers, of all his health, of all his intellect, and all his manners. Prudence is teaching men that they cannot afford to have habits which put their health and self-control in peril. One sees this moderation in all things. See how swearing is going out of vogue. The man whose speech is punctuated with the oaths which characterized the conversa- tion of a gentleman in former days is to-day stamped as vulgar, as coarse. The drunkard to-day is declared a nuisance in the same society which only a few years back shielded his weakness. Coarse indulgences of all kinds have fallen under reproach. They are offensive to good taste. So to say to a young man to study self-control, self-poise, temperance, moderation, is not alone to tell him what is best for him, but it is to place him exactly in line with the tendencies of other men. EQUIPMEN T FOR SER VICE. 1 77 Equipment for Service. Woodrow Wilson, LL.D. President of Princeton University. There are other things besides material suc- cess with which we must supply our generation. It must be supplied with men who care more for principles than for money, for the right adjust- ments of life than for the gross accumulations of profit. The problems that call for sober thought- fulness and mere devotion are as pressing as those which call for practical efficiency. We are here not merely to release the faculties of men for their own use, but also to quicken their social under- standing, instruct their consciences, and give them the catholic vision of those who know their just relations to their fellow men. Here in America, for every man touched with nobility, for every man touched with the spirit of our institutions, social service is the high law of duty, and every American university must square its standards by that law or lack its national title. It is serv- ing the nation to give men the enlightments of a general training ; it is serving the nation to equip fit men for thorough scientific investiga- tion and for the tasks of exact scholarship, for science and scholarship carry the truth forward from generation to generation and give the cer- tain touch of knowledge to the processes of life. 1^8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. But the whole service demanded is not rendered until something is added to the mere training of the undergraduate and the mere equipment of the investigator, something ideal and of the very spirit of all action. The final synthesis of learn- ing is in philosophy. You shall most clearly judge the spirit of a university if you judge it by the philosophy it teaches ; and the philosophy of conduct is what every wise man should wish to derive from his knowledge of the thoughts and the affairs of the generations that have gone before him. We are not put into this world to sit still and know ; we are put into it to act. It is true that in order to learn, men must for a little while withdraw from action, must seek some quiet place remote from the bustle of affairs, where their thoughts may run clear and tranquil, and the heats of business be for the time put off ; but that cloistered refuge is no place to dream in. It is a place for the first con- spectus of the mind, for a thoughtful poring upon the map of life ; and the boundaries which should emerge to the mind's eye are not more the intel- lectual than the moral boundaries of thought and action. The argument for efficiency in edu- cation can have no permanent validity if the efficiency sought be not moral as well as intellect- ual. The ages of strong and definite moral impulse have been the ages of achievement ; and the moral impulses which have lifted highest THE WORLD A WHISPERING GALLERY. 1 79 have come from Christian peoples, — the moving history of our own nation were proof enough of that. Moral efficiency is, in the last analysis, the fundamental argument for liberal culture. A merely literary education, got out of books and old literatures is a poor thing enough if the teacher stick at grammatical and syntactical drill ; but if it be indeed an introduction into the thoughtful labors of men of all generations it may be made the prologue to the mind's emancipa- tion : its emancipation from narrowness, — from narrowness of sympathy, of perception, of motive, of purpose, and of hope. And the deep fountains of Christian teaching are its most refreshing springs. The World a Whispering Gallery. Newell Dwight Hillis, D.D. From "Right Living as a Fine Art." Copyright, 1898, 1899, by Fleming H. Revell Company. Used by permission. When the sage counsels us " to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages," he opens to us the secrets of the soul's increase in wisdom and happiness. All culture begins with listening. Growth is not through shrewd thinking or elo- quent speaking, but through accurate seeing and hearing. Our world is one vast whispering gal- lery, yet only those who listen hear " the still, l8o BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. small voice " of truth. Putting his ear down to the rocks, the listening geologist hears the story of the rocks. Standing under the stars, the lis- tening astronomer hears the music of the spheres. Leaving behind the din and dirt of the city, Agassiz plunged into the forests of the Amazon, and listening to boughs and buds and birds he found out all their secrets. One of our wisest teachers has said, " The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world, is to see something, and to tell'what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk, for one who can think. But thousands can think for one who can see ; to see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one. Therefore rinding the world of literature more or less divided into thinkers and seers, I believe we shall find also, that the seers are wholly the greater race of the two." For greatness is vision. Opening his ears, Watt hears the movement of steam and finds his fortune. Millet explained his fame by saying he copied the colors of the sunset at the moment when reapers bow the head in silent prayer. * The great bard, too, tells us he went apart and listened to " find sermons in stones, and books in the running brooks." It is a proverb that pilgrims to foreign lands find only what they take with them. Riding over the New England hills near Boston, Lowell THE WORLD A WHISPERING GALLERY. l8l spake not to his companion, for now he was looking out upon the pageantry of a glorious October day, and now he remembered that this was the road forever associated with Paul Re- vere's ride. Reaching the outskirts of Cambridge, he roused from his reverie to discover that his silent companion had been brooding over bales and barrels, not knowing that this had been one of those rare days when October holds an art exhibit, and also oblivious to the fact that he had been passing through scenes historic through the valor of a brave man. Of the four artists copying the same landscape near Chamouni, all saw a different scene. To an idler a river means a fish pole, to a heated school boy a bath ; to the man of affairs the stream sug- gests a turbine wheel ; while the same stream leads the philosopher to reflect upon the influence of great rivers upon cities and civilizations. Coleridge thought the bank of his favorite stream was made to lie down upon, but Bunyan, behold- ing the stream through the iron bars of a prison cell, felt the breezes of the " Delectable Moun- tains " cool his fevered cheek, and stooping down he wet his parched lips with the river of the waters of life. Nature has no message for heed- less, inattentive hearers. It is possible for a youth to go through life deaf to the sweetest sounds that ever fell over Heaven's battlements, and blind to the beauty of landscape and moun- 1 82 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. tain and sea and sky. There is no music in the autumn wind until the listener comes. There is no order and beauty in the rolling spheres until some Herschel stands beneath the stars. There is no fragrance in the violet until the lover of flowers bends down above the blossoms. Listening to stars, Laplace heard the story how fire mists are changed to habitable earths, and so became wise toward iron and wood, steel and stone. Listening to birds, Cuvier heard the song within the shell and found out the life his- tory of all things that creep or swim or fly. Listening to babes that have, as Froebel thought, been so recently playmates with angels, the phil- osopher discovered the teachableness, trust and purity of childhood, the secret of individual happiness and progress. Listening to sages, the youth of to-day garners into the storehouse of his mind all the intellectual treasures of the good and great of past ages. That youth may have culture without college who gives heed to Channing's injunction "to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages." Growth : An Evidence of Education. Nicholas Murray Butler, LL.D. President of Columbia University. THERE is a type of mind which, when trained to a certain point, crystallizes, as it were, and GRO WTH : AN E VIDENCE OF EDUCA TION. 1 83 refuses to move forward thereafter. This type of mind fails to give one of the essential evi- dences of an education. It has perhaps acquired much and promised much ; but somehow or other the promise is not fulfilled. It is not dead, but in a trance. Only such functions are per- formed as serve to keep it where it is ; there is no movement, no development, no new power or accomplishment. The impulse to continuous study, and to that self-education which are the conditions of permanent intellectual growth, is wanting. Education has so far failed of one of its chief purposes. A human mind continuing to grow and to develop throughout a long life is a splendid and impressive sight. It was that characteristic in Mr. Gladstone which made his personality so attractive to young and ambitious men. They were fired by his zeal and inspired by his limit- less intellectual energy. To have passed from being " the rising hope of the stern and unbend- ing Tories " in 1838 to the unchallenged leader- ship of the anti-Tory party in Great Britain a generation later, and to have continued to grow throughout an exceptionally long life, is no mean distinction ; and it is an example of what, in less conspicuous ways, is the lot of every mind whose training is effective. Broadened views, widened sympathies, deepened insights, are the accompani- ments of growth. 1 84 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. For this growth a many-sided interest is nec- essary, and this is why growth and intellectual and moral narrowness are eternally at war. There is much in our modern education which is uneducational because it makes growth difficult, if not impossible. Early specialization, with its attendant limited range both of information and of interest, is an enemy of growth. Turning from the distasteful before it is understood is an enemy of growth. Failure to see the relation of the subject of one's special interest to other sub- jects is an enemy of growth. The pretense of investigation and discovery before mastering existent knowledge is an enemy of growth. The habit of cynical indifference toward men and things and of aloofness from them, sometimes supposed to be peculiarly academic, is an enemy of growth. These, then, are all to be shunned while formal education is going on, if it is to carry with it the priceless gift of an impulse to continuous growth. " Life," says Bishop Spald- ing in an eloquent passage, " is the unfolding of a mysterious power, which in man rises to self- consciousness, and through self-consciousness to the knowledge of a world of truth and order and love, where action may no longer be left wholly to the sway of matter or to the impulse of instinct, but may and should be controlled by reason and conscience. To further this process by deliberate and intelligent effort is to educate " PA TRIO TISM. 185 — and to educate so as to sow the seed of con- tinuous growth, intellectual and moral. Patriotism. Hon. Charles Emory Smith. Contributed by the author. The sentiment of patriotism naturally enshrines itself in the supreme crisis of its trial and triumph, and in its supreme personal types. With Ameri- cans it turns instinctively to the two master epochs and the two master heroes of our history. Each epoch developed illustrious leaders. The period of the Civil War and its preparatory strug- gle was resplendent with its matchless group of marvelous men who have commanded the admir- ation of the world. There was Seward, with his long leadership, his acute vision and his brilliant statecraft ; there was Douglas, who was the Rup- ert of debate and the stormy petrel of our most turbulent politics ; there was Grant, with his con- quering sword in the field, and Stevens, with his naming fire in the forum. But out of Illinois, untrained, untutored, except in the self-commun- ion of his own great soul, came the God-given Chieftain to whom the acknowledged princes of statesmanship and oratory were fain to yield the sceptre of supremacy, and whose serene faith and sublime inspiration and almost divine prescience have not been surpassed in all the long and glow- 1 86 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. ing story of liberty's march and humanity's prog- ress. And thus in the incarnation of patriotism we offer our never-ending homage at the shrine of Lincoln, the saviour of the Union. The love of country is a flame that burns in every true heart. But country is not simply rock and dell, or blooming field or stately struc- ture ; it is not alone material or geographical. It was not the glory of the Parthenon that kindled the passion of the Athenian. It was not the grandeur of the towering Alps that moved Win- kelried to gather in his breast the sheaf of Austrian spears, and through his own sacrifice make a triumphal pathway for his struggling compatriots. It was not the gleaming heather, or the bonnie blue lakes of the highlands, loved as they were, which fired " the Scots who ha' with Wallace bled." The inspiration of these glorious deeds was the love of liberty and the pride of principle which found their home in the mountain fastness and in the classic grove. The Greece and Switzerland and Scotland which held the de- votion of their sons were not the outward symbol but the inward life and the historic character which stamped their attributes and their aspira- tions. And so our country, in its true significance, means its essence and not simply its substance. The American Republic is not domain ; it is not power ; it is not wealth ; it is embodied liberty THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. 1 87 regulated by law ; it is liberty resting upon organ- ized institutions, through which society and civi- lization may blossom into their fullest and fair- est flower. The Pursuit of Happiness. Charles Dudley Warner. PERHAPS the most curious and interesting phrase ever put into a public document is " the pursuit of happiness." It is declared to be an inalienable right. It cannot be sold. It cannot be given away. It is doubtful if it can be left by will. The right of every man to be six feet high and of every woman to be five feet four was regarded as self-evident, until women asserted their un- doubted right to be six feet high also, when some confusion was introduced into the interpretation of this rhetorical fragment of the eighteenth cen- tury. The pursuit of happiness ! It is not strange that men call it an illusion. But I am satisfied that it is not the thing itself, but the pursuit, that is an illusion. Instead of thinking of the pursuit, why not fix our thoughts upon the mo- ments, the hours, perhaps the days, of this divine peace, this merriment of body and mind, that can be repeated, and perhaps indefinitely ex- tended by the simplest of all means, namely, the 1 88 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. disposition to make the best of whatever comes to us ? Perhaps the Latin poet was right in say- ing that no man can count himself happy while in this life, that is, in a continuous state of happi- ness ; but as there is for the soul no time save the conscious moment called " now," it is quite possi- ble to make that " now " a happy state of exis- tence. The point I make is that we should not habitually postpone that season of happiness to the future. Sometimes wandering in a primeval forest, in all the witchery of the woods, besought by the kindliest solicitations of nature, wild flowers in the trail, the call of the squirrel, the flutter of the bird, the great world-music of the wind in the pine-tops, the flecks of sunlight on the brown car- pet and on the rough bark of the immemorial trees, I find myself unconsciously postponing my enjoy- ment until I shall reach a hoped-for open place of full sun and boundless prospect. The analogy cannot be pushed, for it is the common experience that these open spots in life, where leisure and space and contentment await us, are usually grown up with thickets, fuller of ob- stacles, to say nothing of the labors and duties and difficulties, than any part of the weary path we have trod. The pitiful part of this inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness is, however, that most men in- terpret it to mean the pursuit of wealth, and strive CAPITAL AND CONSOLIDATION' OF LABOR. 1 89 i for that always, postponing being happy until they get a fortune, and if they are lucky in that, find in the end that the happiness has somehow eluded them, that, in short, they have not cultivat- ed that in themselves which alone can bring hap- piness. More than that, they have lost the power of the enjoyment of the essential pleasures of life. I think that the woman in the Scriptures who out of her poverty put her mite into the contribution- box got more happiness out of that driblet of generosity and self-sacrifice than some men in our day have experienced in founding a university. Combination of Capital and Consolidation of Labor. Justice David J. Brewer. The most noticeable social fact of to-day is that of the combination of capital and the organiza- tion of labor. Whatever may be the causes, and whatever may be the results, good or bad, the fact is beyond dispute that the trend of the two great industrial forces of capital and labor is along the line of consolidation and co-operation. I am not here to decry this tendency. I realize full well that only through this movement are the great material achievements of the day pos- sible ; but one thing is clear, and that is that the penalty which the nation pays for all its benefits 190 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. is the growing disposition to sacrifice the individ- ual to the mass, to make the liberty of the one something which may be ruthlessly trampled into the dust, because of some supposed benefit to the many. A capital combine may, as it is claimed, produce better, cheaper and more satisfactory results in manufacture, transportation, and general busi- ness ; but too often the combine is not content with the voluntary co-operation of such as choose to join. It grasps at monopoly, and seeks to crush out all competition. If any individual pre- fers his independent business, however small, and refuses to join the combine, it proceeds to assail that business. With its accumulation of wealth it can afford for a while to so largely undersell as to speedily destroy it. It thus crushes or swallows the individual, and he is assaulted as though he were an outlaw. So it is with the organizations of labor; the leaders order a strike ; the organization throws down its tools and ceases to work. No individ- ual member dare say : " I have a family to sup- port, I prefer to work," but is forced to go with the general body. Not content with this, the organization too often attempts by force to keep away other laborers. It stands with its accumu- lated power of numbers, not merely to coerce its individual members, but also to threaten any outsiders who seek to take their places. Where The flag. 19 i is the individual laborer who dares assert his liberty and act as he pleases in the matter of work ; where is the individual contractor or employer who can carry on his business as he thinks best ? The business men are becoming slaves of the combine ; the laborers of the trades' union. Through the land the idea is growing that the individual is nothing and that the organization is everything ; and we have the fancy sketch of the dreamer of a supposed ideal state, in which the individual has no choice of lot or toil, but is moved about according to the supposed superior wisdom of the organized mass ; and this, we are told, is the liberty for which the ages have toiled, and for which human blood has crimsoned the earth. The Flag. Wallace Bruce. Contributed to this collection by Mr. Bruce. The only factor in the integral of God's sov- ereignty is the individual ; the only factor in the multiple of this great nation is the unit. There were nineteen families in the Mayflower — an indi- visible number. There were thirteen stripes and thirteen stars in the old flag, indivisible from its I92 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. birth. If any man individually wishes to secede, he can come and go at his pleasure. Blackstone defines liberty as the right of locomotion ; but no man or body of men can walk off with twenty square feet of the sacred soil of old Virginia or a quarter of a school district in Massachusetts. That question has been decided once and for- ever. The serpent of State sovereignty that found its way into the Paradise of our new Republic, and coiled itself Laocoonlike around the limbs of the young nation, has been consigned to a deeper Pandemonium than dreamed of by Dante or Mil- ton. The power and supremacy of the flag have been established — the enduring symbol of the nation's authority ; and I have great respect for the home-rearing of that little boy who when asked in Sunday-School, which was the best verse in the Bible, replied, " If any man attempts to haul down the American flag shoot him on the spot." His home-training for American citizenship had not been neglected, and his Apocryphal verse, printed in bold type, would not injure a leaf of any volume of Holy Writ. You remember how General Dix, who had been Secretary of War only eleven days, sent out that glorious message, the first to thrill the Northern heart. In that sentence, the flag became America ! Ten thousand men might THE FLAG. 1 93 have been shot down in the streets of cities in revolt, and some excuse been devised to cover the crime ; but when the Flag was assailed, the people of the North came like a great avalanche, increasing as it swept, until two million brave men went to the front in the cause of Liberty. We are here to-day, children of a great Repub- lic, crowned with the greatest freedom. Do we know how to appreciate its value ? Some of you here gathered know what it cost. Count it not in the cold figures of arithmetic or in the value of the individual man in the world's com- merce. By the vacant chairs at so many firesides, by the privations, by the heart agony, by the sleep- less nights and long vigils, by the deeds and sufferings of heroic women, by the tears of mother, wife and sister, by the bowed head of the gray-haired man from whom went forth the joy and support of his declining years, by the great army of martyrs, by the brave women who laid down their lives in fever hospitals, and in the presence of that God who listens to the cry of the raven, ay, " caters, providentially for the sparrow," tell me, if you can, the price of yonder symbol? The offerings that we bring fade away and perish, but the glory you won is immortal. No wonder in the midst of these Providences that the whole land, from the pines of Maine to the 194 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. forests of the Sierras, on days like these, wakes to the reveille of the morning stars, and brings its offerings to the dead soldiers until night stations her starry pickets above their graves. Brave boys are they ! gone at their country's call ! How the old songs come back, and eyes grow dim. Their hands are waiting to clasp yours as of old, and their lips to ask what of the Great Republic for which they died. As one by one you go to join the heroic throng, gathering for the last great muster, take this message, " We have one country, one people, free and united, from gulf to lake, from sea to sea." Modern Fiction. Opie P. Read. The drift of latter-day fiction is largely shown by the department store. The selling of books by the ton proves a return to the extremes of romanticism. People do not jostle one another in their eagerness to secure even a semblance of the truth. The taste of to-day is a strong appe- tite for fadism ; and a novel to be successful must bear the stamp of society rather than the approval of the critic. The reader has gone slumming, and must be shocked in order to be amused. Reviewers tell us of a revolt against realism, that we no longer fawn upon a dull MODERN FICTION. 1 95 truth, that we crave gauze rather than substance. In fact, realism was never a fad. Truth has never been fashionable; no society takes up philosophy as an amusement. But after all, popular taste does not make a literature. Strength does not meet with immedi- ate recognition ; originality is more often con- demned than praised. The intense book often dies with one reading, its story is a wild pigeon of the mind, and sails away to be soon forgotten ; but the novel in which there is even one real character, one man of the soil, remains with us as a friend. In the minds of thinking people, realism cannot be supplanted. But by realism, I do not mean the commonplace details of any interesting household, nor the hired man with mud on his cowhide boots, nor the whining farmer who sits with his feet on the kitchen-stove, but the glory that we find in nature and the grandeur that we find in man, his bravery, honor, his self-sacrifice, his virtue. Realism does not mean the unattractive. A rose is as real as a toad. And a realistic novel of the days of Caesar would be worth more than Plutarch's Lives. Every age sees a literary revolution, but out of that revolution there may come no great work of art. The best fiction is the unconscious grace of a cultivated mind, a catching of the quaint humor of men, a soft look of mercy, and a sym- pathetic tear. And this sort of a book may be I96 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. neglected for years, no busy critic may speak a word in its behalf, but there comes a time when by the merest accident a great mind finds it and flashes its genius back upon the cloud that has hidden it. Yes, there is a return to romanticism, if indeed there was ever a turn from it. The well-told story has ever found admirers. To the world all the stories have not been told. The stars show no age, and the sun was as bright yesterday as it was the morning after creation. But a simple story without character is not the highest form of fiction. It is a story that may become a fad, if it be shocking enough, if it has in it the thrill of delicious wickedness, but it cannot live. The literary lion of to-day may be the literary ass of to-morrow, but the ass has his bin full of oats and cannot complain. The novel, whether it be of classic form or of faddish type, makes a mark upon the mind of the public. Fiction is a necessary element of modern education. A man may be a successful physician or a noted lawyer without having read a novel ; but he could not be regarded as a man of refined culture. A novel is an intellectual luxury, and in the luxuries of a country we find the refine- ments of a nation. It was not invention but fancy that made Greece great. A novel-reading nation is a progressive nation. At one time the most successful publication in this country was a RECOGNIZE THE UNIONS. 1 97 weekly paper rilled with graceless sensationalism, and it was not the pulpit nor the lecture-platform that took hold of the public taste and lifted it above this trash — it was the publication in cheap form of the English classics. And when the mind of the masses had been thus improved, the magazine became a success. One slow but unmistakable drift of fiction is toward the short story, and the carefully edited newspaper may hold the fiction of the future. Recognize the Unions. M. W. Stryker, LL.D. President of Hamilton College. UNIONS of labor have come to stay. Combi- nation and " community of interest " are their inherent right, also. They are a fact and a factor. They must be recognized. They are recognized, even in denying them recognition. A condition must be reckoned with. " Does the gentleman,"— said the matter of fact Speaker Reed to one who violently protested to the counting of the actual quorum,— " Does the gen- tleman deny that he is present? " Fingers in one's ears, is an ultimatum that two can play at. To hide under the bedclothes may comfort the child, but will not stop the thunder- I98 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. storm. Even to a criminal the law does not deny the right to choose his own attorney. The cre- dentials of any spokesman are from those who send him, not from those to whom he is sent. The principal accredits his agent. Organized capital speaks through its delegate ; organized labor has the same right. If a given envoy is difficult, austere, or offensive, so much the worse for those who commission him. Either party may request a different legate ; but to pre- scribe how he shall be chosen, or to refuse all, is to break off diplomatic relations. The right not to deal through self-sent meddlers, does not mod- ify the duty to recognize those who are properly endorsed. Only fatuity challenges the right of men to act and to speak collectively and by whom they will. Obviously one hundred thous- and workmen cannot state their case separately to ten thousand separate stockholders, or to ten executive boards. The question, as to Mr. Baer, or as to Mr. Mitchell, is not whether he is in the employ of those to whom he goes, but whether he is authorized by those from whom he comes. The contention of the operators that they may dictate just how their men shall approach them can not hold its ground before American com- mon sense • and fair play. It will fall ; it falls already ; for that public which does not quibble knows that practically the United Mine Workers as such, and in the person of John Mitchell, are RECOGNIZE THE UNIONS. 1 99 before both the commission and the country. The arbitrary precept issues, so far, only in mu- tual exasperations, and furnishes the prolific opportunity of marplots. Any genuine effort to agree must listen to all parties claiming to be such. As to the alleged non-responsibility of the miners, because they are not incorporated, re- member that since they cannot be enjoined they cannot enjoin. It is even. Further remember that their adhesion to their word given is their whole capital. They know that the country watches them in this to see if they be men. Under immense temptation they have this sum- mer past kept their word. It is much. It is enough. Incorporation may be a wise device ; but it is not the first and great commandment ! As to " compulsory arbitration," who wants it? It is a contradiction in terms. The essence of arbitration is voluntary consent to take advice. If its obiter dicta are amicably accepted it is excellent. If it can compel it is but a new court, and we are where we started. Agreement and litigation are two opposite ways. If arbitration could be compulsory it would be superfluous. Oh, for the frank, hearty and open way, with real good will and no mental, or technical reser- vations on either side, satisfying the land of the intent of all concerned to meet all open ques- tions " fair and square ! " Why not take the 200 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. short cut and disappoint the frantic, the mis- chievous, and the obtuse ! All the strong-hearted, the whole land over, would rejoice to see the merely headstrong set aside. " Does 'business' mean 'Die you, live I ?' Then 'Trade is trade' but sings a lie ; 'Tis only war grown miserly ! " But, and moreover, not only must corporations give the freedom they take, not treating equity as a thing to be settled by an exparte dictum ; they must also admit and rectify their errors. The public at present believes that there has been evasion of law, that wages have been in many cases (not in all) inadequate, that the hire- ling has been oppressed by compulsory trade, that overweight tons have been exacted, that little boys have been cheated of life's blessings by premature labor, that not coal alone, but the hearts of children have gone into the ' breakers,' that sacred human life lies among the slate and the culm. Is it true ? End it! Is it false? For God's sake prove it so. The people demand to know, and when they know they will somehow compel substantial justice, before that vast, law-abiding, conservative opinion, which, just because Puri- tanism is so tremendously extant and potent, will get itself regarded and obeyed ! An asser- tion that certain men are " the trustees of God " RECOGNIZE THE UNIONS. 201 can be warranted only by an equitable and God- fearing administration of the trust. All possession, is a public trust. Property is sacred only because person is sacred. Ahab may not covet Naboth's vineyard, for the little is as dear to him to whom it is all, as the much is to the mighty. The great doctrine of "All for each," accepted, can alone replace the rights " strained from that fair use," and allay the antagonisms of labor against other labor, of capital against other cap- ital, and of labor and capital against each other. No true man desires to eat his bread only in the sweat of other men's brows. There is some- thing higher than having, it is being. The bit- terness of attack upon other's possessions is only a new proof of the extraordinary importance which we attach to possession itself. " While it doth study to have what it would, It doth forget to do the thing it should." In that world for which the Carpenter died, his gospel is abroad. " To love one's neighbors as one's self " is his law. To Him "the chief is the servant of all." To " do business upon Chris- tian principles " means far more than not appar- ently to trample the eighth commandment. The Son of Man will have His way. It is Puritan not to doubt that, and to work for it. The Rock of the Ages is the only bedrock of a just human 202 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. society. " Whosoever shall fall upon it shall be broken ; but upon whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder! " Is this " all a sermon ? " Make it a song ! Good men in a good land, and peace to them all ; this is the doctrine and the zeal of the Mod- ern Puritan, entering into the labors of his fathers. Man! God! Conscience! And the law — the law of Christ ! America a World Power. Archbishop John Ireland. What I may speak of on this occasion is results of the war manifest even at this hour to America and to the world, transcending and in- dependent of all treaties of peace, possessing for America and for the world a meaning far mightier than accumulation of material wealth, or commercial concessions, or territorial extension. To do great things, to meet fitly great respon- sibilities, a nation, like a person, must be conscious of its dignity and its power. The consciousness of what she is and what she may be has come to America. She knows that she is a great nation. The elements of greatness were not imparted to her by the war, but they were re- vealed to her by the war, and their vitality and AMERICA A WORLD POWER. 203 significance were increased through the war. To take its proper place among the other nations of the earth a nation must be known, as she is, to those nations. The world, to-day as never before, knows and confesses the greatness and the power of America. The world to-day ad- mires and respects America. The young giant of the West, heretofore neglected and almost despised in his remoteness and isolation, is now moving as becomes his stature. The world sees what he is and pictures what he will be. All this does not happen by chance or accident. An all-ruling Providence directs the movements of humanity. What we witness is a momentous dispensation from the Master of Men. To-day we proclaim a new order of things. America is too great to be isolated from the world around her and beyond her. She is a world-power, to whom no world-interest is alien, whose voice reaches afar, whose spirit travels across seas and mountain ranges to most distant continents and islands ; and with America goes far and wide what America in her grandest ideal represents — democracy and liberty, a govern- ment of the people, by the people, for the people. This is Americanism, more than Ameri- can territory, or American shipping, or American soldiery. Where this grandest ideal of Ameri- can life is not held supreme, America has not reached ; where this ideal is supreme, America 204 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. reigns. The vital significance of America's triumphs is not understood unless by those triumphs is understood the triumph of democ- racy and of liberty. That at times wonderful things come through war we must admit, but that they come through war, and not through methods of peaceful justice, we must ever regret. When they do come through war their beauty and grandeur are dimmed by the memory of the sufferings and carnage which were their price. We say in defence of war that its purpose is justice, but is it worthy of Christian civilization that there is* no other way to justice than war, that nations are forced to stoop to the methods of the animal and the savage ? Time was when individuals gave battle to one another in the name of jus- tice ; it was the time of social barbarism. Tri- bunals have since taken to themselves the administration of justice, and how much better it is for the happiness and progress of mankind ! It is force or chance that decides the issue of the battle. Justice herself is not heard. The decision of justice is what it was before the battle, the judgment of one party. Must we not hope that, with the widening influence of reason and of religion among men, the day is approach- ing when justice shall be enthroned upon a great international tribunal, before which nations shall bow, demanding from it judgment and peace? AMERICA A WORLD POWER. 20$ It was America's great soldier who said, " Though I have been trained as a soldier and have participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not have been found of preventing the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle in- ternational differences, instead of keeping large standing armies as they do in Europe." Shall we not allow the words of General Grant to go forth as the message of America ? It was Wellington who said, " Take my word for it, if you had seen but one day of war you would pray to Almighty God that you might never see such a thing again." It was Napoleon who said, " The sight of a battle-field after the fight is enough to inspire princes with a love of peace and a horror of war." War, be thou gone from my soul's sight ! I thank the good God that thy ghastly spectre stands no longer upon the thresholds of the homes of my fellow-coun- trymen in America or of my fellow-men in distant Andalusia. I ask heaven : When shall humanity rise to such heights of reason and of religion that war shall be impossible, and stories of battle-fields but the saddening echoes of primi- tive ages of the race ? America, the eyes of the world are upon thee. Thou livest for the world. The new era is shed- ding its light upon thee, and through thee upon 206 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. the world. Thy greatness and thy power daze me ; thy responsibilities to God and to humanity daze me — I would say affright me. America, thou failing, democracy and liberty fail through- out the world. And now, America, the country of our pride, of our love, of our hope, we remit thee for to-day and for to-morrow into the hands of the Almighty God under whose protecting aegis thou canst not fail, whose commandments are the supreme rule of truth and of righteous- ness. Competition. Jacob Gould Schurman, D. Sc, LL. D. President of Cornell University. THERE is a growing number of respectable persons with benevolent impulses, who see in the individualistic structure of modern society and in that competition which is its correlate, the root of all evil, the terrible poison of that righteous- ness which alone exalteth a nation. This is a very striking and suggestive phenome- non. Some of the best people in the world agreeing with the worst in repudiating a principle to which more than to any other we owe our modern civilization ! If Darwinism be true, the very existence of our species is due to competi- COMPETITION. 207 tion. In the struggle for life, man emerged and he survived because he was the fittest to survive, but competition has ever since kept human life from fouling by stagnation. Through the rivalry of nations, the moral government of the world is effected ; the brave, the active, the intelligent, the virtuous nations are the scourge of God to sweep away the lazy, the vicious and the ignorant nations. Arts, literature, science, philosophy, politics, inventions, necessities, refinements ; all are the products of minds stirred and quickened by the im- pulse of rivalry. The Homeric epic is our oldest poetry, but it is a collection of songs which were chanted by troubadors in contest. The Greek drama is the model of the world, and save for Shakespeare it has never been equaled. But the Greek dramatists wrote their plays for prizes which were adjudged by popular vote. The Greeks are our ideal of progress, liberal culture and refinement ; and I know no foreign nation whose minds were so keenly sensitive to motives of rivalry. In the modern world, America presents the most conspicuous field for the illustration of competition. Columbus goes ahead of all the others in discovering it. The English outdid the French in gaining possession of it, and the Ameri- cans finally conquered independence from the English. And what prolific and multifarious competition has since obtained in population, in 208 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. politics, in industry, in letters, and in all the in- strumentalities of trade, commerce and transpor- tation ! Without competition the new world would be no America, for, as Emerson says, " America is only another name for opportunity." Here there is opportunity for subsistence, com- fort, wealth, education, high position, character, attainment, and in a word, manhood, opportunity open to every child of our people. All reform is gradual, piece by piece. We can- not risk the experiment of turning society upside down and standing it on its head to see how it looks. Of course, there are inequalities in the world ; there always have been ; there always will be ; but there are fewer to-day than ever before in the history of society, and fewer here than in any other part of the globe. I do not say this to lay a flattering unction to your souls. I say it for your encouragement, for there is much still to do. Let us plod along on the old path, aiding by a stroke here and a push there to bring in the reign of liberty, equality and fraternity. Let us not be led astray by will-o'-the-wisps, by social panaceas of any sort. Let us note clearly what can be done, and what under these terrestrial conditions, with such a human nature as we are endowed with, is altogether impossible. Man is what he is. But he is improvable. Self-love and sociabil- ity are the dominant impulses of his nature. Competition is good, not evil. Instead of sup- THE GENERAL WELFARE. 209 pressing it I demand that men shall compete with one another in deeds of kindness and beneficence as they now do in transactions that lead to gain, or profit, or fame. The need of the world is more competition, not less ; competition in self-sacri- ficing generosity as well as in self-asserting ac- quisitiveness. Why not rivalry in living for others as well as in living for ourselves ? Let selfishness prevail, let men live simply to acquire, and no socialist is needed to pronounce the doom of human society. But the cure is not govern- mental socialism but the fresh individualism transfused and glorified by the social spirit, the spirit of kindness, of helpfulness, and of merciful justice. The salvation of the race lies not in constrained virture, but in free individual effort, and the unbought peace of brotherly love. The General Welfare. Hon. Whitelaw Reid. We are in the Philippines, as we are in the West Indies because duty sent us; and we shall remain because we have no right to run away from our duty, even if it does involve far more trouble than we foresaw when we plunged into the war that entailed it. The call to duty, when once plainly understood, is a call Americans never fail to answer : while to calls of interest 2 1 BBS T A ME RICA AT OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. they have often shown themselves incredulous or contemptuous. The Constitution we revere was ordained " to promote the general welfare," and he is untrue to its purpose who squanders opportunities. Never before have they been showered upon us in such bewildering profusion. Are the Ameri- can people to rise to the occasion ; are they to be as great as their country ? Or shall the his- torian record that at this unexampled crisis they were controlled by timid ideas and short-sighted views, and so proved unequal to the duty and the opportunity which unforeseen circumstances brought to their doors? The two richest archi- pelagoes in the world are practically at our dis- posal. The greatest ocean on the globe has been put in our hands, the ocean that is to bear the commerce of the twentieth century. In the face of this prospect shall we prefer, with the teeming population that century is to bring to us, to remain a " hibernating nation, living off its own fat — a hermit nation ? " Are we to be discouraged by the cry that the new possessions are worthless ? Not while we remember how often and under what circum- stances we have heard that cry before. Half the public men of the period denounced Louisiana as worthless. Eminent statesmen made merry in Congress over the idea that Oregon or Washing- ton could be of any use. Daniel Webster, in the THE GENERAL WELFARE. 211 most solemn and authoritative tones Massachu- setts has ever employed, assured his fellow-Sena- tors that in his judgment California was not worth a dollar. Nobody doubts the advantage our dealers have derived in the promotion of trade, from controlling political relations and frequent intercourse. There are those who deny that " trade follows the flag," but even they admit that it leaves, if the flag does. And independent of these advantages, and reckoning by mere dis- tance, we still have the better of any European rivals in the Philippines. Now, assume that the Filipino would have far fewer wants than the Kanaka or his coolie laborer, and would do far less work for the means to gratify them. Admit, too, that, with "the open door," our political relations and frequent intercourse could have barely a fifth or a sixth of the effect there they have had in the Sandwich Islands. Roughly cast up even that result, and say whether it is a value which the United States should throw away as not worth considering! And the greatest remains behind. For the trade in the Philippines will be but a drop in bucket compared to that of China, for which they give us an unapproachable foothold. But let it never be forgotten that the confidence of Orientals goes only to those whom they recog- nize as strong enough and determined enough always to hold their own and protect their rights ! 2 1 2 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. The worst possible introduction for the Asiatic trade would be an irresolute abandonment of our foothold because it was too much trouble to keep, or because some Malay and half-breed in- surgents said they wanted us away. Have you considered for whom we hold these advantages in trust ? They belong not merely to the seventy-five millions now within our bor- ders, but to all who are to extend the fortunes and preserve the virtues of the Republic in the coming century. Their number cannot increase in the startling ratio this century has shown — if they did the population of the United States a hundred years hence would be over twelve hun- dred millions. That ratio is impossible, but nobody gives reasons why we should not increase half as fast. Suppose we do actually increase only one-fourth as fast in the twentieth century as in the nineteenth. To what height would not the three hundred millions of Americans, whom even that ratio foretells, bear up the seething indus- trial activities of the Continent ! To what cor ner of the world they would not need to carry their commerce ? What demands on tropical productions would they not make ? What out- lets for their adventurous youth would they not require ? With such a prospect before us, who thinks that we should shrink from an enlargement of our national sphere because of the limitations THE GENERAL WELFARE. 213 that bound, or the dangers that threatened, be- fore railroads, before ocean steamers, before tele- graphs and ocean cables, before the enormous development of our manufactures, and the train- ing of executive and organizing faculties in our people on a constantly increasing scale for gene- rations. Does the prospect alarm ? Is it said that our nation is already too great ; that all its magnificent growth only adds to the conflicting interests that must eventually tear it asunder? What cement, then, like that of a great common interest beyond our borders, that touches not merely the conscience but the pocket and the pride of all alike, and marshals us in the face of the world, standing for our own ? What, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? Hold fast! Stand firm in the place where Providence has put you, and do the duty a just responsibility for your own past acts imposes. Support the army you sent there. Stop wasting valuable strength by showing how things might be different if something different had been done a year and a half ago. Use the educated thought of the country for shaping best its course now, instead of chiefly finding fault with its history. Bring the best hope of the future, the colleges and the generation they are training, to exert the greatest influence and accomplish the most good by working intelligently in line with the patriotic aspirations and the inevitable tendencies 2 14 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. of the American people, rather than against them. Unite the efforts of all men of good-will to make the appointment of any person to these new and strange duties beyond seas impossible save for proved fitness, and his removal impossible save for cause. Rally the colleges and the churches, and all they influence, the brain and the con- science of the country, in a combined and irre- sistible demand for a genuine trained and pure civil service in our new possessions, that shall put to shame our detractors, and show to the world the Americans of this generation equal still to the work of civilization and colonization, and leading the development of the coming cen- tury as bravely as their fathers led it in the last. National Unity and the State University. Wm. L, Prather, LL. D. President of the University of Texas. The idea of national unity is as yet young. We have been geographically a nation, territori- ally a nation, governmentally a nation, ethically a nation — for a century. But the development of a true national unity in the fullest sense of the term is one of the great problems for the educa- tion of the future — a problem whose significance and importance we must be fully awake to. Think of the intellectual triumphs which await NATIONAL UNITY. 21 5 a nation of eighty million souls, enjoying oppor- tunities of culture that are accessible to all, from the meanest to the highest, untrammeled by arti- ficial social distinctions, possessing a quickness of intellect and adaptability that goes hand in hand with solid and sturdy moral character, to form the best foundation for the best kind of intellectual culture ; and possessing those ele- ments and characteristics in a measure and degree unequaled among the nations of the world. This is our opportunity, and if we fail to realize it, we are failing of a full conception of our national duty. One of the happiest results which the inter- communication of education has wrought is the larger ability to discuss philosophically, wisely, and with less passion and prejudice, the great questions affecting us as a nation and parts of the same nation. We should never forget that we are brothers, members of the same house- hold ; that this nation is a family of states ; and that whatever affects favorably or unfavorably the welfare of one, affects the whole nation. We must rise to a true conception of this idea if we would in the future avoid sectionalism, and secure the welfare of the whole people rather than the welfare of a particular section. Truth and frank- ness should characterize our dealings with each other as individuals, as states, and as a whole people. One of the most potent forces now 2 1 6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. contributing to the development of such a national sympathy is the State University. If it be true that " the arrival of democracy is the fact of our time, which overshadows all other facts," the very incarnation of true democ- racy is found in the modern State University. A university for the people without distinctions of rank is the regenerating thought of the new world. In the glorious progress of American manhood and womanhood, universities are the torchbearers of American civilization. It is a serious error on the part of our politicians to charge that the great teachers and thinkers of our universities are mere theorists. No wiser step has been taken by our rulers than when they utilized in the affairs of government the training, the learning, and the wisdom of the scholars of this nation. They brought to their aid the lessons of all history, and bravely applied them to the solution of new and perplexing prob- lems, thereby enriching the achievements of American statesmanship. To these great centers of learning, planted in every state of this rapidly expanding union, as well as to our common schools, we must look in the future for that stal- wart and vitalizing American sentiment which shall not only withstand, but shall quickly trans- form and assimilate, the uninstructed foreign population now flocking to our shores. Our safety as a people demands a wise and vigorous NATIONAL UNITY. 217 effort to educate the masses to an intelligent appreciation of the blessings which we as free- men enjoy. The educational forces of this country are doing a great work towards breaking down sectionalism, allaying party strife and pro- moting the peace, prosperity and unity of this nation. , It is my clear conviction that it would be wise for the American people to cease establishing new colleges and universities, and to concentrate their efforts in strenghtening those already founded, thereby increasing their power and efficiency. The State University at the head of the state system of education is an evolution of the best western thought, and the noblest civic achievement of the commonwealth. There should be the closest and most harmonious relation between the university and all the educational agencies of the State. As the university grows, its magnetic life should pervade every district school, and be an inspiration and blessing to all good learning. The system of elementary and secondary education should culminate in the university. If the newer universities, thus developed from the expanding intellectual life of our people, are tied in bonds of closest sympathy and frater- nal co-operation to the older universities already established, and so unite with them to maintain the highest ideals of American life and American 2 1 8 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. thought, the time is not far distant when Ameri- can culture shall be a national culture, exerting on the nations of the earth an influence, as wide and potent as was that of Greece and Rome, in uplifting and enlightening the world. Our Relations with the World. Hon,. Franklin MacVeagh. There are three forces driving us to expanded relations with the world, and we have arrived at that particular period when these forces are be- coming especially active and dominant. The first of them is our trade. It is inevitable that, more and more, from this day forth, our nation will set out to become the greatest trading people ever known in the world. No nation exists with equal facilities or equal necessities for an unprecedented commerce. We not only have in soil and minerals an easy and cheap abundance, heretofore unknown in a like combination ; not only has nature lavishly equipped us, but we have a people unprecedented in manufacturing and commercial gifts. We have capital that is ample and growing, and workmen of practically a new race. We have a population of vast and constantly growing proportions, with OUR RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD. 219 scarcely a drone in the great hive. Such are the elements of our facilities for foreign trade. There will be no seas without American ships, and no ports without American goods carried there under our own flag. For, in the growing cheapness and excellence of our manufactures, nothing will be more cheaply and excellently built than ships. And with an expanding com- merce and a broadening merchant marine what are more inevitable than universal relations be- tween our nation and the whole of mankind ? Another of the forces which are carrying us on to extended relations with the world is the force of our institutions and political ideas. As I said at the beginning, there is a growing issue between our institutions and ideas and those opposing institutions and ideas which they are steadily supplanting throughout the world. America especially stands for these institutions and ideas. We could not see them defeatedo We must de- fend them. They have served well out; prosper- ity, our happiness, and our manhood. Hence- forth we shall serve well their domination of the world. Free government, free commerce, and free men — those first essentials of democracy — are the greatest good, the greatest blessings the political world can know ; and there is in our democratic people that inherent and abiding fidelity to demo- cratic institutions which has kept us faithful 220 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. within our own borders, and is forcing us, as in this war with Spain, to be faithful on the larger stage of the world. Our cry for free institutions in Cuba was the cry of democracy speaking through the voice of our nation. Democracy does not demand war, but it does demand justice. It demands freedom. It de- mands that the modern man who wants freedom shall have freedom. The Monroe Doctrine was democracy's first great challenge. It was our service. And it is wonderful that any nation should have had a spirit equal to that great self- dedication. Any futher step is but another stage of democratic evolution. Who can doubt at this day that democracy is a great militant force, or that it will tend to drive an influential and powerful nation like ours into complete relations with the world ? Democracy knows, better than any other of humanity's great forces, that war is not the best agent of ideas, and the activities of democracy, or of democratic governments, do not mean war. Democracy can be militant without entanglements or conflicts, but it cannot be militant and isolated at the same time. The third of the forces driving our nation on to closer relations with the world is the sense of responsibility inherent in a great, free nation and the consequent impracticability of associating pure isolation with national greatness and OUR RELATIONS WITH THE WORLD, 221 grandeur. No truly great nation ever did or ever will for a very long time remain isolated or feed its soul on indifference to what goes on out- side itself. A truly great nation must become a part of the great world and take its part of the world's burdens ; take its share of responsibility for the world's civilization. Thoughts of human progress are the necessary food of noble minds. Dreams of universal amelio- rations are the nourishment of all great spirits. The isolation of greatness is inconceivable. Greatness is responsible ; greatness is interested in all related great things ; greatness has relation- ships, responsibilities, duties, which are on the scale of its own proportions. And a really great nation must feel responsibilities to the great movement of mankind, as represented in the ac- tivities of all the world together. You might as well expect a great man to limit his interests to the life of his immediate family as to expect a great nation to live entirely within itself. It is against nature, against character, against all human impulse. Therefore this growing sense of necessary touch on the part of our great nation with the civilization and interests of mankind. 222 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. The Problem of The Philippines. Hon. Henry M. Teller. Used by permission. It is certain to me that the interest of the United States does not demand our presence in the Philippines on our present footing. After nearly three years of conflict, after years of actual warfare, with a large army in the Philip- pines — what is the situation? How many we have left there, and how many have returned to go to early graves, how much evil we have inflicted upon our people by that course, indepen- dent of the cost in dollars and cents, God alone knows. No human being can tell us to-day what will be the influence upon a great army there amidst all the temptations and vices of a tropical climate and among a tropical people. It remains yet to be determined by the future how much we are to be damaged, not alone in our purse, but how much we are to be cursed in our physical and mental and moral manhood. I can measure the dollars ; I can count what it costs in that respect ; I can consider what it takes out of the pockets of the American people ; and with our great wealth, great as the cost is, I will not put it for a minute by the degradation that has come to American manhood in the soldiers that we have sent to those islands. I will not attempt to measure it by the side of the degrada- THE PROBLEM OF THE PHILIPPINES. 223 tion that has come to the whole American people by our contact there, by lessening their respect for those great, eternal truths that no Christian nation can for a moment forget or overlook. The worse evil that is befalling us is not the money we are paying out. That we can pay ; that we can forget, great as it is and burdensome as it is ; but the other will remain with us always, a debt never to be paid. There will be no redeemer for that. Is there one here who will say that he has no sympathy with the struggling Filipinos? Can anyone fail to sympathize with them when he sees death and destruction measured out to them and knows, as he must know, that those men believe at least that they are fighting for home and fireside, doing that which the whole world has declared to be a virtue of superior character. The Senator from Massachusetts tells us that those people must submit. The Senator from Ohio in impassioned terms declared to us that the American Army would stay there until every Filipino acknowledged its supremacy. He might have added, I suppose, until he either acknow- ledged its supremacy or went to his grave. Why are those men in arms against the United States? I could understand why Aguinaldo, an ambitious Asiatic, might take up arms against us, for he wanted power and he wanted the advan- tage that he could secure as the leader of the 224 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. people. But what of the rank and file ? What do the common Filipinos mean when they stand in battle before us and when they are ready to go to their deaths in the strife ? Do they not mean that they are standing in defense of what they believe to be right ? As an American I can not feel happy over the defeat of, and I can not myself wish that there should come disaster to, American arms. But I can not but respect the people who believe that we are attempting to subject them and put upon them a government and a system of civilization that they dislike. I can not help feeling for them, and I believe every man here feels for them. He may say they are misguided, that they are igno- rant ; but after all the man who, when he thinks his home is assailed, stands in front of it with his gun is a model of excellency the world over. The American people came to their existence as a nation through blood. We had a long and bloody war — seven years of contest with the then ruling power of the world — but it was not longer than the war in the Philippine Islands will be. A Senator has said to me that there is no counterpart between our condition and that of these people. That is right ; there is not. We were Englishmen. We had come from Eng- land and settled here under English charters and English law, but when England attempted to put upon us a tax that we believed she should GENIUS AND CHARACTER OE GRANT. 225 not we went to war. We did not take up arms because of any atrocities committed upon us. We did not go to war because we were suffering from anything that Parliament had done. We fought for a principle. As Webster said, in the Senate, in 1834, we went to war against a pream- ble. We went to war against a parliamentary declaration that England had a right to govern us and provide for taxation of the American col- onies without their consent. When Parliament passed a resolution declaring that the right existed to enact all the legislation required for the colonies, Mr. Wilkes, a member of the House of Commons, said, referring to it, " It is the com- pendium of slavery," and when Lord North said, " The tax is trifling," Englishmen in both Houses responded, " The American people are not fight- ing because of the size of the tax." They were fighting because of the violation of the principle that taxation and representation under English law must go together. Oh, no ; the conditions are not the same, but we had the right to fight. If we were justified in resisting, so is the Filipino. Genius and Character of Grant. Hon. Clark E. Carr. Contributed by the author. Abridged. In estimating the military genius of General Grant, we must remember that the rebellion was 226 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. attempted under the idea and the firm belief that, while the government might win battles, so great a number of brave people, inhabiting so vast a country, could never be conquered ; that when the Union armies were victorious, the rebels would always be able to retreat, and re- cuperate, and thus indefinitely prolong the strug- gle. This was the opinion of some of the greatest generals of Europe. It was confirmed in a great degree by the early experience of the war. We might have gone on gaining victory for many years and still the object for which the war was waged by the Union army been as far from be- ing attained, as when we commenced. When General Grant came to the front in supreme command the policy was not merely to gain vic- tories but to conquer armies. General Grant will be remembered for his suc- cess in fighting and winning battles, in which he personally commanded. He was always ready to give battle, and it may be said that with him victory became a habit. So regularly and con- stantly successful did he become, that when he was engaged in battle the country came to ex- pect and rely upon victory. His great fame as a military chieftain will rest upon the mighty and successful plans, and com- binations, by which and through which, every battle fought by every Union army, moving over a vast expanse of country, extending thousands GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF GRANT. 22*] of miles, was made to contribute to the grand result — plans and combinations by which and through which officers and men, far away from each other, fighting at Nashville, at Atlanta, around Mobile, and marching to the sea were as literally heroes of the final overthrow and sur- render as those who were present and wit- nessed the grand consummation, to which each, in his own sphere, had contributed. Other great captains may have won as brilliant victories as General Grant, but none have made such great conquests of armies. Others may have made as brilliant marches, and have suc- ceeded in more brilliant assaults, but none have been so frequently and uniformly successful. There is a disposition to compare his military career with those of Marlborough, Napoleon, Wellington and the great Frederick. It is enough for us to remember how we turned to him when in distress, and that he never failed. " The laurel wreath which decks the soldier's brow " was not enough to satisfy the people who delighted to honor General Grant. They must each by his individual expression recognize his great services to his country by making him Chief Ruler. Modestly he accepted the great responsibility, faithfully he performed its duties. Without any of the experiences incident to politi- cal life it is not remarkable that he made mis- takes, but taken all in all it may well be 228 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. claimed that scarcely any other administrations were more wise or beneficent in their results. His was the statesmanship of common sense. He is certainly every day more and more highly appre- ciated. His errors may be traced to the noblest element in his character : his unbounded gratitude and devotion to those who had befriended him and his wife and children in their struggles, while in poverty and want. General Grant's love of home, and friends, and kindred, was not eradicated nor dimmed by his elevation to power. It may well be assumed that upon this element of his nature was builded that patriotism, that intense love of country, which prompted him to such great achievements. He was known as the " Silent Man, " yet there is scarcely another American statesman who has said so many things that are remembered. His " immediate and unconditional surrender ; " his " I propose to move immediately upon your works ; " his " I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer ; " his " Let us have peace ; " his " The easiest way to bring about the repeal of a bad law is to enforce it ; " his " The humble soldier who carried a musket is entitled to as much credit for the results of the war as those who were in command ; " his reply to the Lord Mayor of London, " Although a soldier by education and profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, I have never advocated GENIUS AND CHARACTER OF GRANT. 229 it except as a means of peace;" his " The free school is the promoter of that intelligence which is to preserve us a free nation ; " his in- junction that " no reduction be made in the wages paid to working men and mechanics on account of the reduction of the hours of labor; " his declaration that " If I had fallen, if all our generals had fallen, there were ten thousand be- hind us who would have done our work just as well ; " all these sentiments and many more are remembered and treasured by vast numbers of people. It was the privilege of the writer to become acquainted with General Grant under peculiar circumstances. We had gone up to Pittsburg Landing to bring home Illinois wounded soldiers. Our mission brought us directly to his head- quarters. He received us kindly but we saw at once that a great cloud was hanging over him. Within a few steps of his tent were the head- quarters of General Halleck, the commander of the whole military department. On account of the clamor against General Grant for his action on the first day of the battle of Shiloh, General Halleck had come himself to oversee and direct the movements of the army. Grant was prac- tically superceded. There was great dissatisfac- tion on the part of his friends, that the hero of Fort Henry, of Donelson and Shiloh, should be so treated. While nominally in command of the 230 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA F. army he was really only in command of his per- sonal staff. Governor Yates invited him to come on board of our steamer and dine with us. He readily accepted the invitation stating that he had " nothing to do. " He was with us most of the afternoon and until after night fall. I never was more astonished than by the tone of his con- versation. He talked of the battle of Shiloh, ex- plained how the enemy massed his forces upon one point, declared it was not a surprise, ex- plained the means adopted to recover lost ground, spoke of General Halleck's moving his headquarters to the field, gave us something of that officer's military history, expressed the greatest admiration for him, and seemed rather pleased than otherwise that he had come. He told us of how he was advising General Halleck, and expressed the greatest anxiety to have him succeed. He spoke of his own position, and said that he had not nor should he complain ; that he was in for the war and should stay as long as any other man stayed, and do his best while it lasted, and declared that if it was thought he could do more and be more effective in that position he would carry a musket. We expressed our indignation at the treatment he had received, but he answered not a word. We thought and afterwards talked of the complaints of so many officers, high and low, and contrasted them with him. I thought of the relative posi- SO VEREIGNTY FOLL O WS THE FLAG. 2 3 1 tion of the two Generals at Pittsburg Landing, when, at the close of the war, while General of all the Armies of the United States, General Grant received me at Washington, with General Hal- leck seated near him, who was Chief of Staff. It has seemed to me that General Grant's action during those days while in the valley of humilia- tion was sublime. I have seen him in the midst of his great generals ; I have seen him when surrounded by his Cabinet ; I have seen him in the home circle at Galena and Washington ; I twice saw him, in the midst of a vast concourse of people, inaugurated as President of the United States ; I saw him when hundreds of thou- sands of people greeted him at Chicago upon his return to his native land. But when I try to re- call his face and features, he always comes back to me as he sat there on that summer evening at Pittsburg Landing, serene and self-poised, the conqueror of himself. Sovereignty Follows The Flag. George R. Peck. The Spanish War was not the war of any State, but of all the States ; it was the war of a nation strong in its high sense of right, and strong because it held in its keeping the cause of justice 232 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. and humanity. American sovereignty follows the American flag. If it leads across western seas to the east, or floats over the Oregon washing the foam of two oceans from her prow as she speeds onward to the fight, the national spirit sails with it to the uttermost. To-day the New Union faces new duties. Wars are never exactly what men foresee. The dominion of the Republic has been enormously enlarged, but it was not the lust of conquest that brought it about. It was the logic of events that were greater than men. We may trust the United States, and we may trust the deliberate judgment of its people. Thinking of all that is past, considering the pres- ent and its problems, our look must yet be for- ward, as is the habit of brave men and of states- men who are fit to rule. Speaking in the presence of the President of the United States, whom we honor for what he is and for what he represents, we all unite in acknowledging his sincerity of purpose, his wis- dom, and the high patriotism which by day and by night has guided him in difficult situations and unexpected emergencies. I know of no duty which can rest more solemnly upon the American people than that of sustaining and strengthening him in the great responsibilities he is bearing so bravely and so well. Statesmanship does not require absolute foreknowledge, but it does require the rare ability to meet conditions as SO VEREIGNTY FOLL O WS THE FLAG. 233 they arise When Dewey sailed into the bay he readjusted in an hour the policies and aims of a century. He changed the balance and equilib- rium of nations, and served notice, with every shot he fired, that henceforth the United States must be counted. We have entered new fields, as advancing nations always do ; we have assumed new duties, as living nations always must. It may, indeed, be true that our fathers did not write out on parchment what must be done if, by the fortunes of war, our flag should be carried to islands and seas remote. But, gentlemen, the flag cannot come down. The institutions and the polity of a free republic are equal to new conditions, or they are worthless. A nation that cannot keep pace with what its own arms have accomplished is already catalogued with the incapable and the degenerate. The New Union, which war has welded more firmly together, summons us and leads us forward. It does not invite responsibil- ities nor shrink from them. History has been busy in these last eventful months, interfusing all the elements of our national life, so that the parts forget that they are parts, and remember only an indissoluble, indivisible, indestructible Union. 234 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. The Conquerors. Hon. Cresswell MacLaughlin. I BELIEVE the conquerors of this civilization and the conquerors of all time are those triumph- ant principles which do not depend upon war. The strongest single, individual, divine human force on earth is conquering the human race through love. The time has passed when any- thing like brute force shall be admired. Napo- leon stood before the Sphinx interrogating its silence in vain. The questions he asked will never be answered. Even though the unfettered intellect of modern times surpasses in achievement all dreams of the ancients. The spirit of liberty, the assurance of independence, the democracy of education — these things have made the American people the hope of the world. Civil and religious liberty, the chance of childhood, the reward of merit regardless of wealth or social position, the awakening of the mind from its slumber of cen- turies, the dazzling splendor of invention, the stupendous accomplishments of Science, Art, Commerce — all these, coupled with a capacity for self-government demonstrated beyond doubt by every test of national endurance, makes the American people the balancing power of the world. And yet we are only standing upon the threshold of mystery, like little children still upon the portal of the ocean, charmed by the pebbles THE CONQUERORS. 235 that are polished by the friction of the sea. The spectacles that would have paralyzed the sight of our ancestors have long ceased to fascinate us. The mind refuses to be astounded, neither shock of nature, nor discovery of genius disturbs the equilibrium of the American. Courage is the force of it all. Courage and the atmosphere of freedom. Courage in education and charity. Courage in invention, in execution, in construc- tion ; the knowledge and the nerve of the leaders in all conflicts that confront the advance of the race. Courage in the conception and building of mighty industries ; courage in conquering prob- lems of communication ; courage in the porten- tous tasks of civil, mining and mechanical engi- neering ; courage in the spirit of a stoic will to master the material world. Who can unfold the future ? Who can solve the riddle of another hundred years? As well ask the plans of Omni- potence. We work with the forces of energies unknown. We attack the principles of life and wrestle with the enigmas of God. We put our voice in a cylinder for the audience of coming ages. We whisper and the vibration of our thought resounds throughout the world. We check the charger of the racing wind and make a horse of air. We press a pin and the solemn night bursts into stars. But man is the same. Nature is the same. The chariot of the sun drives down the centuries and Time is the same. 236 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. Circumscribed by laws of gravitation and the grave, man is forever baffled by the Infinite. Man studies the heavens and registers the behavior of planets, he cherishes a star but he can never touch it, he sounds the deep but he can never stand upon its bottom, he tunnels the earth but he will never reach its centre, he sees the struc- ture of the body but he knows not the life that gives it god-like motion, he is aware of the com- plex wonder of the brain, but he will never know its mystery. A deluge may come and the treas- ures of time may be buried in oblivion, but man will be the same and Nature will be the same. Man will start out anew to study what he yearns to know. But he will never know. Arts may be lost but he will find them, civilization may vanish but he will restore it, yet all his work is human and he cannot rise beyond himself. The man dies, the individual disappears, the race goes on, the record is written in the rock and the obit- uary of genius is the history of the world. Ah, yes ! and love is the same and hope is the same and God is the same. In the grandeur of the age we realize how small we are. With all our vanity of learning what do we know? The little child is our philosopher. You cannot answer his questions, who will answer yours? Therefore the Twentieth Century must surpass all others in love, for that does not pass away. The way to make the world happy is to THE CONQUERORS. 237 study the happiness of those who are in your home, in your workshop, in the circle of your life. The firmament is not made of a single sun, but by millions of systems of stars. Hope is on the countenance of the republic as with patience and determination they see the solid centuries of struggle passing in review ; each century stamping its image in the stones of history; each century moving upon a higher plan of possibility ; each assuming more porten- tous proportions — until the ninteenth and the last, glowing with enlightenment arises above the rest to an altitude of human grandeur amazing and sublime. And on the summit of this century, erect, with her face toward the sun, pregnant with peace for the world, fearless, faithful and calm, stands the Goddess of Liberty holding in one hand the sword and in the other education. On her brow rests a wreath of roses and on her neck sparkles the jewels of wealth. Her gar- ments fall in folds of grace upon a figure the companion of which Great Phideas never saw in his visions of Minerva, nor all the imagery of Greece could fashion such a queen. And her name is Peace and her name is Charity and her name is Virtue. She is the mother of Time and her children are order and law, education, liberty, patience and patriotism. At her feet are plead- ing empires and at her breasts nurse the nations of the world. 238 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DA Y. "Let Us Have Peace." Hon. CarlSchurz. Contributed by the author. There are strange teachings put forth among us by some persons, that a war, from time to time, is by no means a misfortune, but rather a healthy exercise to stir up our patriotism, and to keep us from becoming effeminate. Indeed, there are some of them busily looking round for somebody to fight as the crazed Malay runs amuck looking for somebody to kill. The idea that the stalwart and hard working American people, engaged in subduing to civilization an immense continent, need foreign wars to pre- serve their manhood from dropping into effemi- nacy, or that their love of country will flag unless stimulated by hatred of somebody else, or that they must have bloodshed and devastation as an outdoor exercise in the place of other sports — such an idea is as preposterous as it is disgraceful and abominable. There are also corrupt politicians eager to plunder the public under a cheap guise of patri- otism, and unscrupulous speculators looking for gambling and pilfering opportunities in their country's trouble, and wishing for war as the piratical wrecker on his rocky shores wishes for fogs or hurricanes. They deserve the detestation of every decent man. " LET US HA VE PEACE." 239 General Sherman, whose memory is dear to us all, is reported to have said, in his vigorous way : " You want to know what war is ? War is hell." And nobody who has seen war as he had, will question the truthfulness of this character- istic saying. True, war sometimes develops noble emotions and heroic qualities in individ- uals or in a people ; but war is hell for all that. If our boasted civilization and Christianity are to mean anything, they should mean this : No war is justifiable unless its cause or object stand in just proportion to its cost in blood, in destruc- tion, in human misery, in waste, in political cor- ruption, in social demoralization, in relapse of civilization ; and even then it is justifiable only when every expedient of statesmanship to avert it has been thoroughly exhausted. What is the rule of honor to be observed by a power so strong and so advantageously situated as this republic is? Of course, I do not expect it meekly to pocket real insults if they should be offered to it. But surely, it should not, as our boyish jingoes wish it to do, swagger about among the nations of the world, with a chip on its shoulder, and shaking its fist in everybody's face. Of course, it should not tamely submit to real encroachments upon its rights. But, surely, it should not, whenever its own notions of right or interest collide with the notions of others, fall into hysterics and act as if it really feared for its 24O BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OE TO-DA Y. own security and its very independence. As a true gentleman, conscious of his strength and his dignity, it should be slow to take offence. In its dealings with other nations it should have scru- pulous regard, not only for their rights, but also for their self respect. With all its latent resources for war, it should be the great peace power of the world. It should never forget what a proud priv- ilege and what an inestimable blessing it is not to need and not to have big armies or navies to support. It should seek to influence mankind, not by heavy artillery, but by good example and wise counsil. It should see its highest glory, not in battles won, but in wars prevented. It should be so invariably just and fair, so trust- worthy, so good tempered, so conciliatory, that other nations would instinctively turn to it as their mutual friend and the natural adjuster of their differences, thus making it the greatest pre- server of the world's peace. This is not a mere idealistic fancy. It is the natural position of this great republic among the nations of the earth. It is its noblest vocation, and it will be a glorious day for the United States when the good sense and the self-respect of the American people see in this their " mani- fest destiny." It all rests upon peace. Is not this peace with honor ? There has, of late, been much loose speech about " Americanism." Is not this good Americanism? It is surely to-day HONOR TO THE PATRIOT SPY. 24 1 the Americanism of those who love their country most. And I fervently hope that it will be and ever remain the Americanism of our children and children's children. Honor to the Patriot Spy. Edward Everett Hale, D. D. Celebrating Evacuation Day, the anniversary of the de- parture of the British troops from the independent United States, the Sons of the Revolution presented to the City of New York a bronze statue of Captain Nathan Hale, the young patriot who sacrificed his life in 1776 for the cause of his Country's freedom. Of heroic size the statue stands on a drum-like base and looks out on Broadway from the south-west corner of the park. Every line of the figure seems to speak of the sad story of the youthful hero, and the cord-bound ankles and pin- ioned arms, the placid, fearless countenance, and the defi- ant poise of the head told better than voice or pen the story of the patriot's sacrifice. The historic park was alive with patriotism. The scene was a most picturesque one. On the City Hall the flags of the State and the Nation waved in a bracing breeze. Facing the statue was a long platform and tiers of seats, all decked with the colors of the flag. There were men with names their ancestors had written in the Nation's history, and there were fair women who boast their descent from the patriots of the Revolution. On three sides of the park were the soldiers, relieving by the brightness of their arms and uniforms the sombre pic- ture of a sunless day. Most of them were of the regular army, parading by permission of Major-Gen. O. O. Howard, commanding the department of the East. The gallant old 242 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. guard in all the majesty of huge shakos, brilliant uniforms, and flashing accoutrements showed their veteran training. There were also three batallions of marines from the United States ships. Sons of the Revolution, Colonial Dames of America, Daughters of the Revolution, and the guests of the day filled the platform near the statue. At three o'clock the strains of the First Artillery Band could be faintly heard up Broadway, and in a few minutes the Old Guard, the Marines, the Naval Brigade and the various societies began to tramp steadily by and make formation on three sides of the square. The excercises opened with prayer by the Rev. Morgan Dix, the chaplain of the Society of the Sons of the Revolu- tion, after which William Gaston Hamilton, Chairman of the Statue Committee, presented the Statue to the City. When the cord was pulled which released from the figure the Stars and Stripes which enfolded it, thousands of throats sent out a mighty chorus of hurrahs, bands blazed the favorite anthems of the Nation, and as the last fold fell over the wreath of laurel resting against the polished base, a salute of thirteen guns, fired by Light Battery K, United States Artillery, seemed to shake the City to its foundation. President Frederick Samuel Talmadge in a speech ac- cepted the Statue for the Society, Ma^or Gilroy accepted it for the City, General Howard spoke for the Army and Navy, and the venerable Edward Everett Hale, grand nephew of Nathan Hale was called upon to speak for the descendants of the Hale family. With this address the excercises ended, the band played " Hail Columbia " and the crowd gave one mighty cheer and drifted away. This occasion, I suppose, is without a parallel in history. Certainly I know of no other instance where, more than a century after the death of a boy of twenty-one, his countrymen assembled in HONOR TO THE PATRIOT SPY. 243 such numbers as are here to do honor to Hale's memory, and to dedicate the statue which pre- serves it. Let us never forget that the monu- ment unveiled to-day is the monument of a young man ; that he is the young man's hero, let us never forget how the country then trusted young men and how worthy they were of that trust. Hamilton was at this time in his nine- teenth year and he had already won the confi- dence of Greene, and been invited by Washington into his tent. Knox, who commanded Hamil- ton's Regiment was about twenty-four ; Webb, who commanded Hale's Regiment was twenty- two. When in the next year Washington welcomed La Fayette, whom Congress appointed Major-General, he was not yet twenty, and Washington himself before whose age and exper- ience others stood abashed, had only attained the venerable age of forty-four. The Country needed her young men ; she called for them, and she had them. It is one of these young men who, dying at the age of twenty-one leaves as his only word of regret " I am sorry that I have but one life to give for my country " ; because that boy said those words, and because he died, thousands of other young men have given their lives each to his country, and served her as she bade them serve her, even though they died as she bade them die. The fate of Andre and the fate of Hale have 244 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. been compared. Observe that Andre died say ing : " I pray you to bear me witness that I meet my fate like a brave man." Hale died saying : " I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country." " My Country " were his last words. May his country know how to train her boys and how to honor them so that she may be sure of such service and such sacrifice. Our Commercial Relations. Hon. Shelby Cullom. The old Washington policy of extending our commercial relations, but having as little politi- cal alliance with foreign powers as possible, is still imperative. This has been our policy, and in my judgment it should continue to be. We desire to be at peace with all the world. We are at peace with all nations — with Great Britain, the mother country ; with Germany, whose peo- ple have cast their lot with us and are numbered by millions ; France, Russia, Austria, and now with Spain, and I might add the South Ameri- can republics ; Japan and China. We are not ambitious for conquest of territory. We desire as a Christian nation to benefit mankind. We love liberty, and we will rejoice as the nations, one and all, shall give greater comfort and lib- erty to the great masses of people. It should OUR COMMERCIAL RELATIONS. 245 be the duty of government to lift up the people to a plane of greater happiness from generation to generation. The whole course and history of the United States furnish sufficient guarantee for the continuance and maintenance of those humane and liberal principles upon which our system was founded. There need be no fear that the justice of our people will ever permit any policy of tyranny to be established anywhere under the shadow of the American flag. This Government prefers to be a conservator of peace rather than to encourage or engage in war. The people of this country prefer to be promoters of industry and commerce rather than be engaged in bloody conflict. We are ambi- tious to unfurl our sails and send our products into every harbor on every sea. At no time since the sun rose on the Constitutional Govern- ment of the United States has our commerce with foreign nations been so great as in 1898. We are growing rapidly to appreciate the world- power of commerce. The commerce of the world produces the im- pulse which largely controls the peace of the world. In no better way can the United States, as a republic, make its power felt. The exten- sion of its commerce means the extension of its power in the world. The ships of all nations seek our shores and bear away our products and manufactures to all lands. Our locomotives are 246 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. sent to England, Russia, and China. Our ma- chinery and other products will soon reach the markets of all the nations. And this interchange and transportation of industries, extending around the world, will do more to spread peace and enlightenment over both hemispheres than all other agencies, and make this Republic from year to year a greater world-power. The nations are becoming, as time passes, nearer to each other. Here in our nation's capi- tal we celebrate the end of war in a Jubilee of Peace. The nations of the world are in session at the capital of the Netherlands in the interest of the peace of the world. My prayer is that the time may come when " nations shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more, " and that " they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks. " Dead Upon the Field of Honor. Thomas Wentworth Higginson. We meet to-day for a purpose that has the dignity and the tenderness of funeral rites with- out their sadness. It is not a new bereavement, but one which time has softened, that brings us here. We meet not around a newly-opened grave, but among those which Nature has already DEAD UPON THE FIELD OF HONOR. 247 decorated with the memorials of her love. Above every tomb her daily sunshine has smiled, her tears have wept ; over the humblest she has bidden some grasses nestle, some vines creep, and the butterfly — ancient emblem of immortal- ity — waves his little wings above every sod. To Nature's signs of tenderness we add our own. Not " ashes to ashes, dust to dust," but blossoms to blossoms, laurels to the laureled. The great civil war has passed by — its great armies were disbanded, their tents struck, their camp-fires put out, their muster rolls laid away. But there is another army whose numbers no presidential proclamation could reduce ; no gen- eral orders disband. This is their camping-ground — these white stones are their tents — this list of names we bear is their muster-roll — their camp- fires yet burn in our hearts. I remember this " Sweet Auburn" when no sacred associations made it sweeter, and when its trees looked down on no funerals but those of the bird and the bee. Time has enriched its memories since those days. And especially dur- ing our great war, as the nation seemed to grow impoverished in men, these hills grew richer in associations, until their multiplying wealth took in that heroic boy who fell in almost the last battle of the war. Now that roll of honor has closed, and the work of commemoration begun. Without distinction of nationality, of race, of 248 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. religion, they gave their lives to their country. Without distinction of religion, of race, of nation- ality, we garland their graves to-day. The young Roman Catholic convert, who died exclaiming " Mary ! pardon!" and the young Protestant theological student, whose favorite place of study was this cemetery, and who asked only that no words of praise might be engraven on his stone — these bore alike the cross in their lifetime, and shall bear it alike in flowers to-day. They gave their lives that we might remain one nation, and the nation holds their memory alike in its arms. And so the little distinctions of rank that separated us in the service are nothing here. Death has given the same brevet to all. The brilliant young cavalry general who rode into his last action, with stars on his shoulders and his death wound on his breast, is to us no more precious than that sergeant of sharpshooters who followed the line unarmed at Antietam, waiting to take the rifle of some one who should die, because his own had been stolen ; or that private who did the same thing in the same battle, leav- ing the hospital service to which he had been assigned. Nature has been equally tender to the graves of all, and our love knows no dis- tinction. What a wonderful embalmer is death ! We who survive grow daily older. Since the war closed the youngest has gained some new wrinkle, DEAD UPON THE FIELD OF HONOR. 249 the oldest some added gray hairs. A few years more and only a few tottering figures shall repre- sent the marching files of the Grand Army ; a year or two beyond that, and there shall flutter by the window the last empty sleeve. But these who are here are embalmed forever in our imagin- ations ; they will not change ; they never will seem to us less young, less fresh, less daring, than when they sallied to their last battle. They will always have the dew of their youth ; it is we alone who shall grow old. And, again, what a wonderful purifier is death ! These who fell beside us varied in character ; like other men, they had their strength and their weaknesses, their merits and their faults. Yet now all stains seemed washed away ; their life ceased at its climax, and the ending sanctified all that went before. They died for their country ; that is their record. They found their way to heaven equally short, it seems to us, from every battlefield, and with equal readiness our love seeks them to-day. " What is a victory like? " said a lady to the Duke of Wellington. " The greatest tragedy in the world, madam, except a defeat." Even our great war would be but a tragedy were it not for the warm feeling of brotherhood it has left behind it, based on the hidden emotions of days like these. The war has given peace to the nation ; it has given union, freedom, equal rights ; 250 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. and in addition to that, it has given to you and me the sacred sympathy of these graves. No matter what it has cost us individually — health or worldly fortunes — it is our reward that we can stand to-day among these graves and yet not blush that we survive. The great French soldier, La Tour D'Auvergne, was the hero of many battles, but remained by his own choice in the ranks. Napoleon gave him a sword and the official title " First among the grenadiers of France." When he was killed, the emperor ordered that his heart should be in- trusted to the keeping of his regiment — that his name should be called at every roll-call, and that his next comrade should make answer, " Dead upon the field of honor." In our memories are the names of many heroes ; we treasure all their hearts in this consecrated ground, and when the name of each is called, we answer in flowers, " Dead upon the field of honor." The State Versus Anarchy. L. Clark Seelye, D.D. , LL.D. President of Smith College. Abridged. What is anarchy? It is a very old spirit, and has existed from the earliest ages. It has mani- fested itself in every age and in nearly every THE STATE VERSUS ANARCHY. 25 I man. We see it in the child, in its first childish defiance of parental law. It manifests itself in every community ; there are anarchists here, and there are anarchists all over the world. Wherever men are determined to do their own will, or pleas- ure, irrespective of the laws which have been enacted for public welfare — there is the spirit of anarchy. Every criminal has it. " No thief ere felt the halter draw, With good opinion of the law. " Arson, theft, drunkenness, adultery, mur- der — all the horrible crimes which have ever been committed, are its natural fruit. And the unending struggle of humanity, from the earliest age, has been to gain the victory over this vile spirit, and bring it into subjection. In modern times, however, it appears in a somewhat new guise of a philosophic reformer. The ravening wolf comes to us, at first, in sheep's clothing. Anarchy poses as a social benefactor and propounds its theory as a sure panacea for existing ills. Citing the abuses and diseases of existing governments, it maintains that these can only be removed by the annihilation of govern- ment, that the government of any man is worse than useless, and the state is only another name for oppression. They have paraphrased Jeffer- son's famous maxim in the couplet, " The very best government of all Is that which governs not at all. " They recognize no rights of any individual or 252 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. body of individuals to interfere with them and declare they will have neither state nor laws. Never was a theory propounded so utterly lack- ing in reasonable basis, so fully disproved by the plainest facts. What then is this power we call the state, the nation, which anarchy seeks to destroy ? Its origin also goes back to primeval history. The ancients believed it came from God, and that the ruler or king was God's vicegerent. In popular mytholo- gies, which often express in poetical form the earli- est conceptions of truth, the rulers and mighty men were said to have descended from a divine forefather. The body politic was regarded as a body divine, through which the divine law of righteousness was to be realized among men. Did not these early conceptions express, in a crude way, an eternal truth ? May we not believe that the nation, like the individual, has its origin in a common creator? Man no more made its essential sovereignty than he made himself. Men were created for each other, to find in their union as citizens their primal law of growth. As an old philosopher puts it, " Man is by nature a political being. " It is not mere mysticism when we speak of the nation, therefore, as a moral person. The nation as an organization we may regard as a divine idea. Man was created for it. It is bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, and what THE STATE VERSUS ANARCHY. 253 God hath thus joined together, man can never put asunder without grievous injury. There has been no true development of the individual apart from the national life. Without it, we have the mob, the horde, the despotism. The record of man's life apart from the State has ever been that of a slave, and a slave to the lowest brutal appetites, or the most debasing superstitions. The interests of the individual and the interests of the Nation have ever been identical. For the ideal of the Nation and of the individual must be the perfect freedom which comes from obedience to righteous law. To be master of himself, man must be subject to other men. His own will must be strengthened and perfected by loyal submission to the authority of a higher reason. The State takes from no man, therefore, any right when it prohibits vice. It maintains every right in the prohibition. He gains his liberty by submission to rightful law. True liberty exists only when man's better nature sits on the throne and reason exercises, unhin- dered, its sovereignty. It is no mere figure of speech, which has led men in so many ages and in so many parts of the globe to speak of the Nation as their Fatherland, their mother country, for they really owe to it their birthright and their most valuable posses- sions. In its truest sense, the Nation represents both 254 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. fatherhood and motherhood. It is the mighty parent of us all, to which we owe allegiance by the strongest of earthly obligations. It offers its protection to all its citizens ; — to those who are most helpless and in need of succor ; it gives man the security of his home, the blessings of education, and the liberty to worship God ; it offers a helping hand to those who are in trouble and want ; it furnishes a sound basis for public credit, it defends us against foreign and intestine foes, it secures for us the fruit of our own indus- try ; it provides the strongest safeguards for truth, for liberty and for righteousness ; it is in truth what Milton called it, " the mighty growth and stature of an honest man " ordained by God to take from the human spirit its fetters, so that humanity may enter into the fullness of its life, and the kingdom of Heaven may be realized among men. Far, indeed is any nation from the attainment of its perfect form. None has yet been able to remove the hindrances to freedom. It is in the midst of this same unceasing conflict which exists in the individual soul. Just as we struggle in our individual spheres with the forces which hin~ der us from being what we ought to be, so the nation on its broader theatre of action is strug- gling with the forces which prevent it from help- ing us and others as it ought. In this struggle can you doubt, on which side What i^ trOth? 255 a man ought to be, and which of these two ir- reconcilable foes — Anarchy and the State— we should strive to overcome ? Let us not forget, however, that anarchy, although so comparatively weak and despicable, can never be overcome by the use of its own weapons. A lawless spirit we can not extinguish by lawless measures. Lynching is anarchy, even though an anarchist be lynched. Let no sug- gestion of taking the law into one's own hands come ever from the pulpit, press, or popular assembly. To repress anarchy most effectually, we must seek first to strengthen and purify the government ; we must elect the best men to office — men who will find out and enact wise and right- eous laws ; we must cultivate greater respect and reverence for law ; we must cease to calumniate and villify men in the highest posts of civil authority ; we must educate the people and pro- mote reverence for God and whatsoever is true and good. What Is Truth ? Henry S. Pritchett, LL. D. President of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the days of the Roman Emperors the pro- curator of a certain conquered province in Asia 256 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. Minor found before him two parties, each of whom claimed to represent the truth. On the one side were the religious leaders of the province, earnest, narrow, confident that they were the divinely appointed guardians of truth. On the other side stood one accused by them of impiety, unbelief, and disregard of the law. But when the accused spoke, his plea for truth was so noble and so earnest that it aroused the attention of even the careless and reckless procurator, and, as he looked in bewilderment from one to the other, he asked, half helplessly, " What is truth ? " In order that a man may reach truth, and hav- ing reached it make it effective, at least two qualities are necessary. One is what we call moral sense, earnestness of purpose, desire to do that which is true. The other is intellectual clearness, the ability to think. And the result which a man accomplishes is in large measure a function not of one but of both of these qualities. You have in mechanics a formula for the momentum of a moving body. This momentum depends both upon the mass of the body and upon its velocity, and is equal to the product of the mass by the velocity. The momentum of a man in the social order in respect to truth is represented by a similar formula. His efficiency equals the moral purpose multiplied into the ability to think straight. The world's history is full of the story of men WHA T IS TRUTH? 2tf who had one of these qualities and who failed by lack of the other. It is difficult to say which has done the greater harm — blind devotion which would not see. or intelligence which saw but lacked purpose and moral courage. Each has at one time or another filled the world with crime and suffering. There is another quality of the mind which ought also to enter into one's attitude toward truth, and which is characteristic of the scientific spirit and of the scientific method. This quality is tolerance. For how strong soever one feels himself to be in purpose, and how sure soever he may consider his conception, other men just as sincere, possibly as able, will discern truth in a different direction and approach it by a different path. No man, no party, no sect, and no religion has a divine monopoly either of truth itself or of the ways by which truth may be found. The principle that free expression of opinion is conceded to those who differ from the recog- nized authorities is a lesson which individuals and parties, societies and nations, have been slow to learn. This right, so far as social, political, and religious questions are concerned, is limited to-day by curious social and geographic lines. It is the boast of our Anglo-Saxon stock that political and religious freedom has found its fairest fruitage in Anglo-Saxon civilization. We who live under a regime which guarantees to each 258 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. citizen freedom of thought and of speech do well to recall now and then the mistakes and the difficulties through which our fathers came to learn this lesson. It is a story full of the weak- nesses and of the strength of humanity ; a story of progress step by step, with many halts and back- ward steps; a story of cruelty and of devotion; of the blindness of the many and of the clear vision of the few ; but a story always of human progress toward truth. For the desire to compel other men to accept one's own view of truth has been confined to no class and to no age. It has been a very human characteristic since the days when men lived in caves and dressed in skins. Kings and priests, having had most power in their hands, have had most opportunity to use the argument of force. Mahomet found that the sword was the surest argument to convert a stubborn mind, and doubtless he was thoroughly honest in his belief. The priests who crucified Christ felt no doubt of their devotion to truth. A few centuries later those who called themselves followers of Christ found in their hands the power to persecute men for their opinions, and they did not hesitate to use it. As the Rev. John Cotton, in his con- troversy with Roger Williams, naively asserted, persecution is not wrong in itself ; " it is wicked,'* said he, " for falsehood to persecute truth, but it is the sacred duty of truth to persecute false- WHAT IS TRUTH? 259 hood " ; and that teaching bore strange fruit for New England soil. We think of Boston Common as sacred to liberty and to freedom and to the rights of man; and I believe there is no spot on earth more truly dedicated to human freedom. Yet it has beheld other scenes than gatherings of indignant colonists or groups of patriot citizens anxious for their country's future. Our thoughts seldom go back to that October morning in 1659 when William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, and Mary Dyer were led out on Boston Common to be hanged for teaching the doctrines of the Quakers. It is not easy for us at this day to realize that men and women could be hanged on that free soil for rejecting the doctrine of original sin and of the resurrection of the body, for denying the efficacy of baptism, and for asserting the absolute right of private judgment. And I remind you of this scene, not to compare our liberality with the narrowness of our fathers, but to call your attention to the fact that by their very earnestness of purpose and by their examination and discussion of religious questions the fathers found the path to truth, though long and rough ; persecution gave way to tolerance, and a colony founded to perpetuate a special view of divine truth became a State where any man may follow truth as his own heart and his own mind direct. And this ideal is, after all, 26o BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. that toward which great souls have labored in all ages. For this scientific method is no new invention of the nineteenth century. The men who have led humanity have always been those who went forward with open hearts and with clear minds. For literature and science and poli- tics and religion are not separate and distinct things, but only different parts of the same thing ; different paths by which men have sought after beauty and truth and righteousness — and these are one. We know truth when we reach it of our own effort and make it our truth. The politics and the religion which a man inherits, without think- ing and without effort, count little toward his political and his spiritual development. Men differ, and will always differ, as to what truth is in this or in that matter, but that man finds truth who seeks it ; he serves truth who follows it fear- lessly; he serves his fellow-men who does all this with humility and with tolerance. "Grant us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. " This short prayer has come down to us from one of the heroes of the early Church, him whom men called the golden-tongued ; one who, after a life of devotion and of courage and of tolerance, died at the hands of ignorance and jealousy. The words of this prayer, few and simple as they are, seem to me to ask all that a human soul can A NEW CENTURY GREETING. 26 1 ask — in this world knowledge of God's truth, in the world to come the life everlasting. The educated man, the courageous man, the tolerant man, has no other prayer. A New Century Greeting. Andrew Carnegie, The world, led by the American Republic, took a long step upward in the closing days of the year, 1902. Last century one Russian Emperor, Alexander II, and one American President,Lincoln, banished from the civilized world human slavery — the own- ing of man by man. To-day another Russian Emperor, Nicholas II, and another American President, Roosevelt, have jointly pronounced the coming banishment of earth's most revolting spectacle — human war — the killing of man by man. The former suggested, the latter breathed the breath of life into, The Hague tribunal, the per- manent high court of humanity, for the peaceful settlement of international disputes. Henceforth the nation which refuses to submit its quarrel to this tribunal places itself in the wrong ; the world will believe it has not its " quarrel just." This will disturb its conscience and shorten its sword. 262 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V, Differences may still arise which may not be submitted, the barbarous appeal to force may still disgrace our civilization for a time, the em- bers and scoriae from the seething pit of savagery may explode here and there at longer and longer intervals as time passes, but the complete ban- ishment of war draws near. Its death wound dates from the day that President Roosevelt led five opposing powers, four being of the very first rank, to the Court of Peace, and thus proclaimed it the appointed substitute for that which had hitherto stained the earth — the killing of men by each other. These four rulers must ever rank among the supreme benefactors of man. Whatsoever may lie upon the laps of the gods for the two still in the midst of their careers, it seems impossible that any other service they may yet render can approach that which has insured them enduring fame among the highest. It is when such a step forward as this is taken that we are reverently moved to exclaim, " Truly all is well since all grows better ; man marches upward ! " Rufus Choate. Hon. Joseph H. Choate. It is forty years since Rufus Choate strode the ancient streets of Boston with his majestic RUFUS C HO ATE, 263 step — forty years since the marvellous music of his voice was heard by the living ear — and those who, as students and youthful disciples, followed his footsteps, and listened to his eloquence, and almost worshipped his presence, whose ideal and idol he was, are already many years older than he lived to be ; but there must be a few still living who were in the admiring crowds that hung with rapture on his lips — in the courts of justice, in the densely packed assembly, in the Senate, in the Constitutional Convention, or in Faneuil Hall consecrated to Freedom — and who can still recall, among life's most cherished mem- ories, the tones of that matchless voice, that pallid face illuminated with rare intelligence, the flashing glance of his dark eye, and the light of his bewitching smile. But, in a decade or two more, these lingering witnesses of his glory and his triumphs will have passed on, and to the next generation he will be but a name and a statue, enshrined in fame's temple with Cicero and Burke, with Otis and Hamilton and Web- ster, with Pinkney and Wirt, whose words and thoughts he loved to study and to master. Many a noted orator, many a great lawyer, has been lost in oblivion in forty years after the grave closed over him, but I venture to believe that the whole Bar of America, and the people of Massachusetts, have kept the memory of no other man alive and green so long, so vividly 264 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OF TO-DAY. and so lovingly, as that of Rufus Choate. Many of his characteristic utterances have become proverbial, and the flashes of his wit, the play of his fancy and the gorgeous pictures of his imagination are the constant themes of reminis- cence, wherever American lawyers assemble for social converse. How it was that such an exotic nature, so ardent and tropical in all its manifestations, so truly southern and Italian in its impulses, and at the same time so robust and sturdy in its strength, could have been produced upon the bleak and barren soil of our northern cape, and nurtured under the chilling blasts of its east winds, is a mystery insoluble. Truly, " this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. " In one of his speeches in the Senate, he draws the distinction between "the cool and slow New England men, and the mercurial chil- dren of the sun, who sat down side by side in the presence of Washington, to form our more perfect union." If ever there was a mercurial child of the sun, it was himself most happily described. I am one of those who believe that the stuff that a man is made of has more to do with his career than any education or environment. The great- ness that is achieved, or is thrust upon some men, dwindles before that of him who is born great. His horoscope was propitious. The stars in their course fought for him. The birthmark of RUFUS CHOATE. 265 genius, distinct and ineffaceable, was on his brow. He came of a long line of pious and devout ances- tors, whose living was as plain as their thinking was high. It was from father and mother that he derived the flame of intellect, the glow of spirit and the beauty of temperament that w r ere so unique. And his nurture to manhood was worthy of the child. It was " the nurture and admonition of the Lord/' From that rough pine cradle, which is still preserved in the room where he was born, to his premature grave at the age of fifty-nine, it was one long course of training and discipline of mind and character, without pause or rest. Upon the solid rock of the Scriptures he built a magnificent structure of knowledge and acquire- ment, to which few men in America have ever attained. History, philosophy, poetry, fiction, all came as grist to his mental mill. But with him, time was too precious to read any trash ; he could winnow the wheat from the chaff at sight, almost by touch. He sought knowledge, ideas, for their own sake, and for the language in which they were conveyed. His splendid and blazing intellect, fed and enriched by constant study of the best thoughts of the great minds of the race, his all-persuasive eloquence, his teeming and radiant imagination, whirling his hearers along with it, and sometimes 266 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. overpowering himself, his brilliant and sportive fancy, lighting up the most arid subjects with the glow of sunrise, his prodigious and never-failing memory, and his playful wit, always bursting forth with irresistible impulse, have been the subject of scores of essays and criticisms, all struggling with the vain effort to describe and crystallize the fascinating and magical charm of his speech and his influence. And first, and far above his .splendid talents and his triumphant eloquence, I would place the character of the man — pure, honest, delivered absolutely from all the temptations of sordid and mercenary things, aspiring daily to what was higher and better, loathing all that was vulgar and of low repute, simple as a child, and tender and sympathetic as a woman. Emerson most truly says that character is far above intellect, and this man's character surpassed even his ex- alted intellect, and, controlling all his great en- dowments, made the consummate beauty of his life. I know of no greater tribute ever paid to a successful lawyer, than that which he received from Chief Justice Shaw in his account of the effort that was made to induce Mr. Choate to give up his active and exhausting practice, and to take the place of Professor in the Harvard Law School, made vacant by the death of Mr. Justice Story. After referring to him then, in 1847, as " the leader of the Bar in every department of RUFUS C HO ATE. 267 forensic eloquence," and dwelling upon the great advantages which would accrue to the school from the profound legal learning which he pos- sessed, he said : " In the case of Mr. Choate, it was considered quite indispensable that he should reside in Cambridge, on account of the influence which his genial manners, his habitual presence, and the force of his character, would be likely to exert over the young men, [drawn from every part of the United States to listen to his instruc- tions." What richer tribute could there be to personal and professional worth, than such words from such lips? He was the fit man to mould the characters of the youth, not of the city or the State only, but of the whole nation. His power of labor was inexhaustible, and down to the last hour of his professional life he never relaxed the most acute and searching study, not of the case in hand only, but of the whole body of the law, and of everything in history, poe- try, philosophy and literature that could lend any- thing of strength or lustre to the performance of his professional duties. His hand, his head, his heart, his imagination were never out of training. Think of a man already walking the giddy heights of assured success, already a Senator of the United States from Massachusetts, or even years afterwards, when the end of his professional labors was already in sight, schooling himself to 268 BEST AMERICAN ORA TIONS OF TO-DA Y. daily tasks in law, in rhetoric, in oratory, seeking always for the actual truth, and for the " best language " in which to embody it — the " precisely one right word " by which to utter it — think of such a man, with all his ardent taste for the beau- tiful in every domain of human life, going through the grinding work of taking each successive vol- ume of the Massachusetts Reports as they came out, down to the last year of his practice, and making a brief in every case in which he had not been himself engaged, with new researches to see how he might have presented it, and thus to keep up with the procession of the law. Verily, " all things are full of labor; man cannot utter it : the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." His name will ever be identified with trial by jury, the department of the profession in which he was absolutely supreme. He cherished with tenacious affection and interest its origin, its his- tory and its great fundamental maxims — that the citizen charged with crime shall be presumed innocent until his guilt shall be established beyond all reasonable doubt ; that no man shall be deprived by the law of property or reputation until his right to retain it is disproved by a clear preponderance of evidence to the satisfaction of all the twelve ; that every suitor shall be con- fronted with the proofs by which he shall stand or fall ; that only after a fair hearing, with full RUFUS C HO ATE. 269 right of cross-examination, and the observance of the vital rules of evidence, shall he forfeit life, liberty or property, and then only by the judg- ment of his peers. And now in conclusion, let me speak of his patri- otism. His glowing heart went out to his country with the passionate ardor of a lover. He believed that the first duty of the lawyer, orator, scholar was to her. His best thoughts, his noblest words, were always for her. Seven of the best years of his life, in the Senate and House of Representatives, at the greatest personal sacrifice, he gave abso- lutely to her service. On every important ques- tion that arose, he made, with infinite study and research, one of the great speeches of the debate. He commanded the affectionate regard of his fellows, and of the watchful and listening nation. He was a profound and constant student of her history, and revelled in tracing her growth and progress from Plymouth Rock and Salem Harbor, until she filled the continent from sea to sea. He loved to trace the advance of the Puritan spirit, with which he was himself deeply imbued, from Winthrop and Endicott, and Carver and Standish, through all the heroic periods and events of colonial and revolutionary and national life, until, in his own last years, it dominated and guided all of Free America. He knew full well, and displayed in his many splendid speeches and addresses, that one unerring purpose of freedom 270 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO- DA Y. and of Union ran through her whole history ; that there was no accident in it all ; that all the generations, from the Mayflower down, marched to one measure and followed one flag ; that all the struggles, all the self-sacrifice, all the prayers and the tears, all the fear of God, all the soul- trials, all the yearnings for national life, of more than two centuries, had contributed to make the country that he served and loved. The Commerce Clause of the Constitution and the Trusts. Abridged. Hon. Philander C. Knox. The extent to which legislative control over commercial activities should be exercised is, of course, a question for legislative wisdom. We have the experience of the other nations to guide us in determining how far the delicate and mys- terious rules of trade can be interfered with by positive statutes without injury. That experi- ence teaches us that the least interference con- sistent with the preservation of essential rights should exist. Arbitrary regulations that restrain free intercourse are usually found to be unwise. Primarily it is for the Congress to decide whether it has the power, and whether and to what extent it will execute it — what character of THE CONSTITUTION AND THE TRUSTS. 2J\ restraints, whether all or those only which are unreasonable and injurious shall fall under the ban, whether legislation in the first instance should extend to all commerce or only to com- merce in articles of vital importance to the people. The time never was when the English- speaking people permitted the articles necessary for their existence to be monopolized or con- trolled, and all devices to that end found con- demnation in the body of their laws. The great English judges pronounced that such manifes- tations of human avarice required no statute to declare their unlawfulness, that they were crimes against common law — that is, against common right. It is difficult to improve upon the great un- written code known as the common law. Under its salutary guaranties and restraints the Eng- lish-speaking people have attained their wealth and power. It condemns monopoly, and con- tracts in restraint of trade as well. The dis- tinction, however, between restraints that are reasonable in view of all the circumstances and those which are unreasonable, is recognized and has been followed in this country by the courts. This distinction makes a rule that may be practically applied, and preserves the rational mean between unrestrained commerce and the absolute freedom of contract. A law regulating interstate commerce for its 272 BEST AMERICAN ORATIONS OE TO-DAY. protection against restraint, so broad as to cover all persons whose business is conducted under agreements which are in any way or to any ex- tent in restraint of trade, might exclude thou- sands of small concerns conducting industries in one State from marketing their products in others ; but a law which only covers contracts and combinations in restraint of trade, as defined by the common law, would exclude all hurtful combinations and conspiracies. Congress can, if it sees fit, adopt the scheme of that law. In the enforcement of such law each case as it arose would be considered upon its own facts, and the rule of guidance would be as laid down by the Su- preme Court of the United States ; that is, " pub- lic welfare is first considered, and if it be not involved and the restraint upon one party is not greater than protection to the other party re- quires, the contract may be sustained. The question is whether, under the particular circum- stances of the case and the nature of the particu- lar contract involved in it, the contract is, or is not, reasonable„ Let me give you an illustration showing the difference between a reasonable and unreason- able arrangement or contract at common law. First, as to a reasonable one — The case of a sale of a business and its good- will is a good illustration. Here a restricted covenant upon the part of the vendor not to THE CONSTITUTION AND THE TRUSTS. 273 engage in competition in a similar business is often the main consideration for the transaction. This covenant is, of course, in restraint of trade, and interferes with competition. But to make a contract such as this illegal is not only restrictive of the liberty of contract, but it is depriving one of his property without due process of law. Good-will is property capable of being appraised, bought, and sold. In many cases it is the main ingredient of value. It represents all the strug- gle, industry, tact and judgment that make suc- cess. In estimating the worth of a business it is not infrequently reckoned more valuable than the buildings and machinery that make up the physical plant. Such a contract has been held reasonable and valid. Now as to an unreasonable agreement let me quote an illustration from the pen of a Justice of the Supreme Court : "In Morris Run Coal Co. v. Barclay Coal Co. (in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania) the principal question was as to the validity of a contract made between five coal corporations of Pennsylvania, by which they divided between themselves two coal regions, of which they had the control. The referee in the case found that those companies acquired under their arrange- ment the power to control the entire market for bituminous coal in the northern part of the State, 274 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. and their combination was, therefore, a restraint upon trade and against public policy. In re- sponse to the suggestion that the real purpose of the combination was to lessen expenses, to ad- vance the quality of coal, and to deliver it in the markets intended to be supplied in the best order to the consumer, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania said : " This is denied by the defendants ; but it seems to us it is immaterial whether these positions are sustained or not. Admitting their correctness, it does not follow that these advantages redeem the contract from the obnoxious effects so strikingly presented by the referee. The important fact is that these companies control this immense coal field ; that it is the great source of supply of bituminous coal to the State of New York and large territories westward ; that by this contract they control the price of coal in this extensive market, and make it bring sums it would not command if left to the natural laws of trade ; that it concerns an article of prime necessity for many uses ; that its operation is gen- eral in this large region, and affects all who use coal as a fuel, and this is accomplished by a combination of all the companies engaged in this branch of business in the large region where they operate. The combination is wide in scope, general in its influence, and injurious in its effects. These being its features, the contract is against public policy, illegal, and therefore void. " The question of reasonableness is thus one for the courts to determine, and it is manifest that this doctrine gives play to just considerations of the freedom and inviolability of contracts with THE CONSTITUTION AND THE TRUSTS. 2J^ proper judicial safeguards against unconscionable arrangements rightly void as contrary to public policy. The Sherman Act is entitled, " An act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints," etc., and the able dissenting opinion in one of the leading cases in the Supreme Court argues from this indication and other considera- tions that the restraints intended to be stricken off were only those unreasonable restraints as de- fined at common law. But the law was authori- tatively decided to include all restraints, whether reasonable or unreasonable. Nevertheless, in ex- tending the law it might be deemed wise by Con- gress now to import and impose this distinction clearly, for the following reasons among others : Because the hard and fast extreme rule may work injustice in various instances where a mod- erate restraint is either not harmful at all to the general interests, or only slightly so in com- parison with the importance of the freedom and sacredness of many contracts which public policy does not manifestly condemn ; because the ques- tion of reasonableness, as in the common law, should be for the courts — surely the safest arbiter and reliance in human disputes — and because, from the economic standpoint, freer play would thus be given, and perhaps " a way out " indi- cated, in the conflict between the important principles of free competition and combination. We have no certain knowledge of the nature 2j6 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. and effect of the natural laws which are carrying forward evolution in economic and social phe- nomena as in all other branches of biology. But we may be confident that in some sort and with whatever perversions, public policies, constitu- tional charters of government, and municipal laws roughly manifest these natural laws and re- flect their main tendencies. Proper free play of forces might be maintained by importing into the situation the idea of " reasonableness " and judicial determination thereof, for the due con- trol of unnecessarily destructive competition ; and, for preventing the opposite danger, by de- vising a system of regulation which would strike the evils of combination at the heart and aid in the great object of restraining hurtful re- straints and monopolies, especially as to the prime necessities of life. The conditions of our commercial life are the result in part of an evolution of forces of world- wide operation. They have developed gradually, and are not, perhaps, fully understood. Laws regulating and controlling their operation, before they ripen into a complete system of wise juris- prudence, will be of gradual growth. PHILLIPS BROOKS. 277 Phillips Brooks. Abridged. James H. Baker, M. A., LL. D. President of University of Colorado. Contributed by the author. Among the men who did notable work dur- ing the latter part of the Nineteenth Century was Phillips Brooks. Here was a man who succeeded, to whom men willingly listened, who fostered the best ideals of all who came under his influence. To most people an accentuated life has a stronger attraction; we enjoy expression of one- sided ability, emotional, intellectual or practical. Eccentricities of genius are spice to more substan- tial qualities. Brooks was a normal man, a well- balanced character. His interest was in the great- est problems of humanity, and it is as true to- day as when Plato taught, that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort. Yet he, using none of the arts by which false or superficial reputation is made, interested men of every type in ethical and religious thought — the highest proof of spiritual power. As with all great men, Phillips Brooks' genius lay in his receptiveness and his energy. His mind was open to the whole field of knowledge 278 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA V. and to all best ideas and influences — beauties in nature, traits of character, material and social forces, thoughts of the greatest writers. He selected the useful material and rejected the worthless and harmful. He was able to give bountifully, because he received largely. Withal he had the power to work prodigiously, and he took up each duty with intense earnestness. Like every man who in any field ever won glory, he prepared for his success with drudging, per- severing labor, directed toward definite results. There was no mental or moral imbecility, no paralysis of will, no unused, wasted or misdirected energy — the marks of human folly and failure. He conserved his splendid powers and applied them. In character he was simple, natural, frank, strong of will, of fine instincts, hating the base, and loving whatever was beautiful and noble. Power, whether in natural forces or in thought and will, strongly attracted him. He had a sane mind, judging men and events wisely. He had an optimism and common-sense faith that carried him safely through the trying period of mate- rialistic thought which characterized the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. To his power for work and his sound character were added traits necessary for practical success : a sincere and honest bearing ; strong convictions spoken in simple and earnest manner ; a sunny PHILLIPS BROOKS. 279 expression ; a most saving spirit of mirth which never wearied ; and above all, a sympathetic knowledge of men or rather of the nature of man, We respect him for his broad view and tolerant spirit. Here was a man who advocated candor in the pulpit concerning growing interpretations of religious truth, and could publicly thank God for the life and work of any good man however he might differ in belief. He was thoroughly progressive in spirit, and this bit of humor and philosophy is very significant: "The Puritans! How glad I am they lived and that they don't live now. " It is said of the greatest men that they belong to no particular time or place. Homer and Aristotle are modern. We hail a new genius in so far as he views the incidents of current history in large perspective. This man was claimed by several religious denominations, for he spoke great truths found in all creeds because common to all minds. His knowledge of human nature was gained partly by direct analysis, partly by instinctive induction from his own nature. He could make men conscious of their own proper stand- ards for self-respect, and for this reason merchants and laborers would leave their work on week days and listen to him with respectful and deep interest. In his life and teachings he gave supreme 280 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. emphasis to character. There are outward mis- fortunes which youth may encounter, when real work in life begins, and over these one may usually triumph ; but the inner defect of an errant purpose and a weak will is the great mis- fortune and causes most of the outward evils. The theme is, of course, painfully trite, but char- acter to-day is approaching par value. When in the strict business world, a life-assurance pol- icy, or a railroad appointment practically implies a temperance pledge, and a fidelity bond pre- supposes a successful examination in morals, and business men proclaim there is little permanent success without the policy of honesty, we may well take a new view of the matter. Character is the indispensable qualification for almost any business, is the passport to good society, is needed in politics and all social relations, is the solution of industrial and social problems. Char- acter is the surviving ideal of chivalry ; it is the ground of self-respect ; it is the consummate flower of the evolutionary process, the practical foundation of religion, and the mark of our divine nature. Strong fathers and loving mothers, when they send their sons and daughters into the world, wish them happiness and prosperity, but supremely do they pray for a noble and beautiful life. Tendency toward wise conduct is inborn, but its realization depends upon the material for PHILLIPS BROOKS. 28 1 growth. Capacity means nothing without ideas. Brooks succeeded because he constantly received from many and the best sources. Of highest importance is the nature of our images and ideas. No skill of alchemy ever turned base metal into gold ; good character cannot be made from base images, and trivial interests. He who chooses the evil when the good is offered is undoubtedly, as old Plato philosophized, a fool, and so much the worse for him. The cunning of the artisan, the discoveries of science, the heroism of every- day life, the standards of men who have com- bined greatness with goodness, nature's sym- bolism, are lessons for the wise. In Tennyson's Idylls, King Arthur makes his knights-errant swear to reverence their conscience as their king, to redress human wrongs, to honor their own word, to lead sweet lives in purest chastity, to keep down the base, learn high thought, amiable words, love of truth, and all that makes a man. The Arthurian legends have come down to us from a remote past, and the poet's use of them is largely metaphorical ; but we have to-day many King Arthurs of blameless life, crowned by nature, as our exemplars. We can choose our own companions of our round table. The Sacred City of Camelot, where dwelt the ideal knights, is our own habitation, for it is but symbolic of the spiritual development of man. We need not go forth in pursuit of the 282 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. Holy Grail, for the sacred cup but represents the next duty, however humble, at hand. Labor and Capital. Abridged. Hon. Marcus A. Hanna. Organized labor, or as we know it better, " union labor," is an imported article. It came to us with the influx of population from the old world, having been established and in operation many years in Europe, and particularly in Eng- land. It came to us having been born among conditions — which do not and cannot exist in America — where the education and the experi- ences of men taught them to antagonize the upper class, and strange as it may seem, the very men who came from the forge and from the workshop laid the foundation of our great indus- trial institutions. But those people came full of the same prejudice that was inaugurated there — with an antagonism to capital, and feeling that every man's interests, who was or had been an employer, was against theirs, until they in turn became the employers. It is an institution prompted by workingmen who seek to protect themselves, whose object is mutual benefit. During its early history in this country there was a natural prejudice LABOR AND CAPITAL. 283 against it, because it seemed at variance with American institutions, because it seemed to place itself in antagonism to the employers of this country. But it is one of the objects on the part of those who are working for this cause to Americanize labor organizations, to fit them for their surroundings and conditions in this country ; and to that end the organization called the Civic Federation is now bringing the atten- tion of the public to that question. The motto of the Civic Federation is the " Golden Rule," and its basic policy is that any- thing which is antagonistic to the best interests of society and morals shall be eradicated. We do not believe in sympathetic strikes. We do not believe in the boycott. We do not believe in restriction of production to enhance values. And from that platform we propose to urge and to advocate a code of principles and a policy which will elevate those who are called upon to arbitrate for labor to a position where they will fully appreciate that this is a better way. Every man has a vulnerable spot. There is a side to every man's character that is approach- able, and the most vulnerable of all methods is kindness. Appeal to his heart and to his mind with reason and you will succeed in establishing a bond of confidence, and that is the foundation. The first thing to be done practically in our efforts to accomplish the best for which we are 284 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. striving is to establish a condition between the employer and employee of absolute confidence one in the other. Remember the Golden Rule, and to make this proposition practical, live up to the principles of the Golden Rule. Is it pract- ical? Yes. You will treat those men as you would have those men treat you. We have to be thankful for an era of pros- perity unequaled in our history. We are all so busy now that we are likely to forget whence it comes. Our condition may be the natural sequence of favorable crops, of improved machin- ery, and an enterprising people, but after all, there is a higher power which regulates it all. It is our duty while enjoying this prosperity and its fruits, when we come to consider the mate- rial interests at stake, to remember that there are two factors along that line which contribute to it : the men who work with their hands, and the men who work with their brains ; partners in toil who should be partners in the benefits of that toil. Have you ever thought what an influence we are receiving into our body politic when we read the statistics of the thousands, ay, hundreds of thousands of immigrants coming to this country every year from the lowest social conditions of the old world, full of prejudice and always " agin the government"? It is a serious proposition, particularly as they very soon become voters, LABOR AND CAPITAL. 285 and have a way of expressing their sentiments that is very potent at times. It is a factor, and it is a thing to be considered. We have to con- sider those men as useful to us, yes, necessary under such conditions as we have to-day. But they are unlettered, untaught ; they know nothing about the spirit and the institutions of our country. Some of them, unfortunately, think liberty is license, or something to eat. It is not wonderful that they should affiliate with their own class and be content to work it out, and if necessary, to fight it out from that stand- point. Forget the idea that there are any classes under our free government. Forget that in this great principle of social advancement there is any line of demarkation. Forget that the man who labors with his hands is different from the man who labors with his brain. Bring all to- gether upon that common platform of principle, and then give to it the impulse of your better advantages and education, of your greater and wider experiences, of your ability through mate- rial resources, to help every man who needs it, and you have resolved the thing to a practical proposition which will admit of no doubt about its future success, provided you do not tire in doing good. A good proposition to any Doubting Thomas who talks about the theory of the question is, 286 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. " Try it yourself." Take one man whom you know in your community, who works with his hands, whether on the streets, in the shops, or in the factories. Acquaint yourself with the con- ditions against which he must contend to make a living for himself and family ; see what oppor- tunities he has, compare them with your own, and then ask yourself, Is there anything I can do to help the situation? Is that theory? You may find that sickness or other misfortune has come to him. He is too proud to ask alms. If you find that he and his family are suffering under these conditions, do not wait until he gets to the poorhouse, or a committee organized by law shall ascertain these facts, but make your- self responsible. Is there any better way by which you can bring him into closer business relations than to show him that you recognize his manhood and are working for the best con- ditions the community can give to carry him on through the work and trials of life? The practical result of a strike, nine times out of ten, comes from a misunderstanding or from indifference on the part of one side or the other. Experience has shown that the men who are associated with the civic Federation on the part of labor, twelve of them, all leaders of great labor organizations, are just as competent, in conferences upon this subject, just as earnest and just as honest in their treatment of this LABOR AND CAPITAL. 287 matter as the other side. Recognize that fact, give them credit, and the battle is more than half won. Make them feel that your interest in them is for the mutual benefit of both, and believe in their sensibility and their ability to manage their affairs as well as you can manage yours, and you will create a trust that no law can break ; the kind of trust for which you need no constitutional amendment. It is a great, broad principle on which the very foundations of our government rest. There is a great deal said, from a demagogical standpoint, against organized capital. Looking back through the last hundred years we are almost bewildered at the complexity of improve- ments in every industrial phase of our institu- tions, improvements which have advanced the interest of the laboring men as well as that of the capitalist. This rapid advance is the culmi- nation of educated intellect by its practical appli- cation to every form of industry and every profession. It is just as natural a sequence as that one following upon the rising and the set- ting sun. Organized capital was just as neces- sary to get this condition of things, as any part of it. This organization of capital has come to stay, just as organized labor has come to stay, and for the same reason it is necessary. You cannot separate the interests of capital and labor. If it is good for one to be organized for any pur- 288 BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. pose, it is good for the other for the same reason. They are both good. They are both necessary, as applied to our conditions to-day and to our development for the future. The combination of capital has brought to our industrial institu- tions greater economic results ; it has brought an increase and expansion of trade, and higher wages to the men. When you talk about organ- ized capital as a monopoly in this country you talk nonsense. There is no monopoly in the United States save that protected by a United States patent, for there is not a field of industry in this country not open to anyone and every- one who sees fit to embark capital in that line. As capital is organized and produces beneficial results, labor which was organized many years before and has grown in efficiency ever since, will be the first to recognize, and it does recog- nize to-day, the fact that the organization of cap- ital and the combination of talent and capital produces results which give to them better op- portunities. When you reflect that many of the great masters in every branch of industry in the United States came from the loom and forge and furnace, you can see the inducement for compe- tition. The object lesson stands bright before the operator when he with his rod is working at the furnace to-day and remembers that the man who pays him, once worked there himself. When A RETROSPECT OF ORATORY. 289 you attempt to put a check on enterprise backed by ability and brains, you limit all progress by saying that you must not have any organizations, that they are a detriment to the country. They are not. Union is not only strong for the mu- tual benefit of labor, but strong for the develop- ment of enterprise and ability diverse in their motives, but which when brought together form a force which is irresistible. There is a combi- nation not only of money, but of everything that contributes to the successful putting together of material and intellect and ability and pushing it to its furthest limits, and already that enter- prise has reached far beyond the confines of our borders. A Retrospect of Oratory. Lorenzo Sears. From "The History of Oratory." By permission of Scott, Foresman and Company, Publishers. A RETROSPECT of oratory during twenty-four centuries is not unlike a glance along the horizon line of a mountain range with its elevations and depressions ; for the history of eloquence, like that of liberty, its companion, is marked by diversified fortunes. On this horizon there are lofty peaks showing where volcanic fires reared their monuments ; there are lesser heights beside 29O BEST AMERICAN OR A TIONS OF TO-DA Y. them and low table lands and shadowy valleys and sunless gorges. The mountain tops, upon which light perpetu- ally lingers are named for the Greek Demos- thenes and Cicero the Roman ; for John of Anti- och and Tertullian of Carthage and Ambrose of Milan ; for Savonarola of Florence, Peter of Picardy, Jaques de Vitry and his successors at the court of Louis the Great. Westward there is a giant group in England, and across the ocean another group upholding the honor of free and fearless speech in the remotest West. A more deliberate view also reveals eloquence and liberty going hand in hand from the Orient to the Occident; in Greece amidst Hellenic resis- tance to Asiatic despotism, in Rome, in a long warfare against imperialism, in the early Church, against papal usurpation, in mediaeval ages, against the sacrilege of the Saracen, at the Re- formation, in protest against ecclesiastical cor- ruption, in France, against the dominion of Satan in high places, and later against the grinding oppression of the people by kings. In England, voices are lifted up for authority tempered with justice and generosity, in America for equal rights of all subjects of the Crown, and afterward for general liberty under the laws, with the nat- ural sequence of freedom to all the inhabitants of the land. In all this movement there can also be observed diverse phases of expression in differ- ent ages and countries. Attic simplicity and A RETROSPECT OF ORATORY. 2g I strength running into Asian splendor, degenera- ting at length into barbaric tawdriness, followed by a restored severity not untainted with the finery of a later time, passing into an almost sav- age crudeness, uncouth and grotesque, to be refined at last by the revival of letters to a style blending the classic and romantic tendencies, which henceforward will fare on together accord- ing to the temperament of each nation, age, and orator as the subject, the issue, and the occasion shall demand. In all the long procession there is also a similar variety of method and manner and form, the same repetition of unchangeable principles in a diversity of manifestation that pre- vails in material and immaterial nature through- out the universe, so far as observation has reached; variety in unity, diversity of form amidst uni- formity of law, changing phases of expression, but ceaseless persistance of purpose toward larger truth, a larger liberty, and a nobler life. Until, however, these are more completely attained it cannot be affirmed that the movement which has continued so long with various degrees of accelera- tion will wholly cease, or that there will be no need of the speaking man in the future. There- fore the necessity still remains of gathering up the lessons left by masters of the art in the past, that, profiting by their successes and their fail- ures, the men of the present and the future may know how they can best instruct, convince and persuade. Do YOU know HOW to Attract and Hold an Audience ? Every clergyman, every lawyer, every teacher, every man or woman occupying an official position, every citizen and every youth who is likely ever to have occasion in committee, or in public, to enlist the interest, to attract and hold the attention of one or more hearers, and convince them every person who ever has to, or is likely to have to "speak" to one or more listeners will find in our new book a clear, concise, complete handbook which will enable him to succeed ! If you have the " gift" of oratory this book will ena- ble you to perfect it. If you are an indifferent speaker, you can become a finished one by accepting this book's guidance. If you are a beginner, but ambitious withal, this book will serve you as a guide-post to success, and by a path escaping the many embarrassments which discourage the novice. Thorough, concise, methodical, replete with common sense, complete these words describe fitly this new book ; and in his logical method, in the crystal-like lucidity of his style, in his forceful, incisive, penetrating mastery of this subject, the author has at one bound placed himself on a plane with the very ablest teacher-authors of his day. The title of the book is How to Attract and Hold an Audience. Price $1.00 postpaid. HINDS & NOBLE, Publishers of Commencement Parts (all kinds), $1.50 Pieces for Prize Speaking Contests, $1,25 New Pieces for Prize Speaking Contests, $1.23 Pros and Cons — Complete Debates, $1.50 Pieces for Every Occasion, $1.23 New York City Schoolbooks 0/ all publishers at one store Our Own Publications Cloth unless otherwise stated 31-33-35 West Fifteenth Street Between Fifth and Sixth Avenues Schoolbooks of all Publishers at one store College Men's 3-Mintrte Declamations* Up-to-date selections from live men like Chauncey Depew, Hewitt, Gladstone, Cleveland, Presidents Eliot (Harvard), and Carter (Williams), and others. New material with vitality in it for prize speaking. Very popular. Eighth edition. $J,00. College Maids' 3-Minute Readings. Up-to-date recitations from living men and women. On the plan of the popular College Men's 3-minute Declamations, and on the same high plane. 4th edition. $1*00* Pieces for Prize Speaking Contests. Volume I. Over one hundred pieces that have actually taken prizes in prize speaking contests. Successful. $1.25. Pieces for Prize Speaking Contests. Volume II. $J.25. Pieces for Every Occasion. Including "special days." Something new, $J.25. Handy Pieces to Speak. Single pieces and dialogues. Primary, 20 cts. ; Inter- mediate, 20 cts.; Advanced, 20 cts. All three for 50 cts. On separate cards. 108 selections in all. Acme Declamation Book. Single pieces and dialogues. For boys and girls of all ages ; all occasions. Paper, 30 cts. ; cloth, 50 cts. Many editions sold. Pros and Cons. Complete debates of the affirmative and negative of the stirring questions of the day. A decided hit. This is another book invaluable not only to high-school and college students, but also to every other person who aspires to converse engagingly on the topics of the day. Our foreign policy, the currency, the tariff, immigration, high license, woman suffrage, penny postage, transportation, trusts, department stores, municipal ownership of franchises, government control of telegraph. Both sides of these and many other questions com- pletely debated. Directions for organizing and conducting debating society, with by-laws andparlia* mentary rules. No other book like it. $1.50. PIECES TOR PRIZE SPEAK"* CONTESTS ^5r The Best American Orations of To-day. $1.25. New. How to Attract and Hold an Audience. Every clergy- man, every lawyer, every teacher, every man or woman occupying an official position, every citizen and every youth who is likely ever to have occasion in committee, or in public, to enlist the interest, to attract and hold the attention of one or more hearers, and convince them — every person who ever has to, or is likely to have to ' 'speak" to one or more listeners will find in our new book a clear, concise, complete handbook which will enable him to succeed! $J.OO. Thorough, concise, methodical, replete with common sense, complete — these words describe fitly this new book; and in his logical method, in the crystal-like lucidity of his style, in his forceful, incisive, penetrating mastery of his subject, the author has at one bound placed himself on a plane with the very ablest teacher-authors of his day. Fourth edition -within its first year! Commencement Parts. "Efforts" for all occasions. Orations, addresses, valedictories, salutatories, class poems, class mottoes, after-dinner speeches, flag days, national holidays, class-day exercises. Models for every possible occasion in high-school and college career, every one of the " ef- forts" being what some fellow has stood on his feet and actually delivered on a similar occasion — not what the compiler would say if he should happen to be called on for an ivy song or a response to a toast, or what not ; but what the fellow himself, when his turn came, did say I Invaluable, indispensable to those preparing any kind of "effort." Unique. $1.50. Readings from the Popular Novels. $J.00. New. New Dialogues and Plays. Life-like episodes from popular authors like Stevenson, Crawford, Mark Twain, Dickens, Scott, in the form of simple plays, with every detail explained as to dress, make-up, uten- sils, furniture, etc. For schoolroom or parlor. $1.50. A Southern Speaker. Selections from the orations, ad- dresses, and writings of the best known Southern ora- tors, Southern statesmen and authors. $(.00. Reading. A Well-Planned Course. $J.OO By Caroline B. Le Row, compiler of " Pieces for Every Occasion." There has long been wanted a book of new selections for classes, with lessons on the art of reading. How to Use the Voice in Reading and Speaking. By Ed. Amherst Ott, head of the School of Oratory, Drake University. Suitable for class work. $1.25* How to Gesture. By Professor Ott. $J.OO. Ten Weeks' Course in Elocution* With numerous selections for illustration and practice. Simple and practical. For classes, or self-teaching. $J*25* Fenno's Science and Art of Elocution* Standard. $1*25. New Parliamentary Manual. By Edmond Palmer, A.B., instructor in Civics and Economics in the Engle- wood High School, Chicago. A manual designed to be used as a text book in high schools and colleges. The special feature of this book is the new and original table enabling one to decide at a glance any question arising on the subject of parliamentary procedure. 75 cents* Wholly new. How to Organize and Conduct a Meeting* 75 cents* Likes and Opposites* Synonyms and Opposites. To have at one's command a variety of equivalent words and their opposites is to possess an incalculable ad- vantage both in writing and speaking. 50 cents* T etter "Writing* Rules for correct correspondence. 75 Cts. Punctuation Mastered in Twelve Lessons. Paper. 25 cents. Punctuation. Hinds & Noble's new Man- ual. Paper, 25 cents* New Speller. Hinds & Noble's new graded list of 5,000 words which one mustknov/ how to spell. Useful. 25c. Bad English* Humiliating ' ' breaks " cor- rected. Paper. 30 cents* Common Errors in Writing and Speaking. 50 cents* Composition "Writing Made Easy* Very successful. Five grades, viz. : A, B, C, D, E, 20 cents each. All five for 75 cents* Arranged on separate cards. 1000 Composition Subjects* Paper. 25 cents* Orthography and Orthoepy* By Isaac W. Clinger. Adapted for class use. Boards. 50 cents* Complete Class Record-Book, Hinds & Noble's new register, with several new and very useful features. Twenty weeks. Arranged by John J. Quinn. 50 cents* Smith's New Class Register. Long the Standard. 50 cts. Smith's New Astronomy. IHus. Quarto. Boards, 90 cts, Coon's Civil Government. For N. Y. State. 75 cents. ♦ fjO»pTinds ♦ » Wm^* Songs of All the Colleges* Words and music throughout. A welcome gift in any home ! Everyone likes a college song, and this book is an ideal gift to place on the piano for one's friends to enjoy, even though one sings not himself. Attractive and durable cloth. $ U5Q, New edition with 104 songs added for 67 other colleges. Over seventy college presidents have purchased this volume to have at their homes, for the students on social occasions. Ten editions have gone into many thousands of homes. If you have a piano but do not play, the pianola and other "piano-players" will play many of these songs for you and your friends to sing. Compiled by college men, endorsed by college presidents, 'rah-'rah'd by college students, brothered by college alumni, sistered by college alumnae, adopted aud programed by college glee clubs everywhere j by local clubs, choral societies, and singing classes. Contains all the dear old familiar songs, as well as the popular new songs typical of alma mater in colleges east, west, south, north. Many old favorite tunes with new catchy, up- to-date words — serious, sentimental, humorous ; also the Wah, 'rah kind. Yale men know, and the Neva Haven Union says: "The question of what in the world to give a friend is solved by the publication of songs of all the colleges, which is suitable alike for the collegian of the past, for the student of the present, and for the boy (or girl) with hopes, also for the music-loving sister and a fellow's best girl. Another college paper : " They ring true I " Says the Principal of a famous private school: " It incites to college." Songs of the Western Colleges* Durable cloth binding. $J*25. Songs of the Eastern Colleges* Novel, durable cloth, $1,25. These two books present an ideally complete por- trayal of the musical and social side, the joyous side, of the student life in our Western and Eastern colleges respectively. Plenty of the old favorites of all colleges, while crowded with the new songs. To own all three above books is to possess the most complete, the most adequate illustration ever attempted of this phase of the genius, the spirit of Young America. New Songs for College Glee Clubs. Paper. 50 cents* Twenty humorous hits, besides others, sentimental and serious. Not a selection but has been sung by some glee club locally to the delight of an " encoring audience." Glee Club leaders will appreciate a collection every piece in which, by the severe test of both rehearsal and concert, is right — the musical notation, the harmony of the voice parts, the syllabification, the rhythm, the rhyme, the instrumentation, and last, but not least with audiences, the catchonativeness. Gordy's A Broader Elementary Education. By the author ot .New Psychology, $1.25. Questions on each chapter. Gordy's New Psychology. Familiar talks to teachers and parents on how to observe the child-mind. Questions on each Lesson. $1.25. 37th thousand! The Foundations of Education* By Dr. Levi Seeley. author of " History of Education." In this book the author, an able teacher and superintendent of long experience, recounts from his experience or the bene- fit of teachers, those very many things, the avoiding which or the doing which, as the case may be, makes for failure or success accordingly. An inspiration— not only to the teacher, but also to the parent who reads it. To possess this book is like having a friend and counsellor always at one's elbow. $1,00* Methods of Teaching Gymnastics* Anderson. $1.25. Best Methods of Teaching in Country Schools* $1*25* 200 Lessons Outlined in Arithmetic, Geography, Grammar, United States History, Physiology. A splendid help for busy, time-pressed teachers. $1.25* Mistakes of Teachers corrected by common sense (the famous Preston Papers). Solves difficulties not explained in textbooks, which daily perplex the conscientious teacher. New Enlarged Edition — fourth large printing, A veritable hit. $L00. Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching* With Questions and Answers. Paper, 50c. Cloth, $J. The teachers* standby, Roark's Outline of Pedagogy. A Working Manual. Aptly and briefly described as an indispensable tool for ** teachers in the trenches." Interleaved for notes. 75 cents* Stout's Manual of Psychology* Introduced in its first year into more than fourscore of colleges and universities in this country and in Canada. $J*50. The Perceptionalist* Hamilton's Mental Science. By special typographical arrangement adapted to either a longer or shorter course. $2.00* Mackenzie's Manual of Ethics* The most successful text-book on ethics ever published. Adopted and used in over two hundred Colleges, Universities and Normal Schools. New, Fourth Edition. $1.50. Continental Copy Books* Numbers x to 7. 75 cents dozen* What Shall I Do ? 50 profitable occupations. $1.00, Going to College* By Professor Barbe of West Virginia University. Says The Evangelist: "Glows with the enthusiasm of a high ideal. We wish it could be in the library of every high school, seminary, and academy in the land." 50 cents* The Scholars' A B C of Electricity. Can you explain even the simple phenomena about electricity? Do you hate to appear quite ignorant of the very simplest facts regarding the telephone, the telegraph, the electric light, the dynamo, the trolley? This little book states the facts in clear words devoid of tech- nicalities, and in entertaining style. No need to study or commit to memory ; just to read it is to under- stand. 50 cents* Lessons on Practical Subjects* 50 cents. Who's Who in Mythology? 1000 mythological char- acters briefly described. Identifies and locates instanter every god and goddess, hero and myth that are likely to be broached either in conversation sermon, song, drama, painting or statuary. 75 cents. Who's Who in History? 1000 classical characters and allusions briefly explained. Locates the places. identifies the persons, describes the things, which are constantly alluded to in literature, on the rostrum and platform, in sermons, in paintings, in sculpture and in conversation. 75 cents* How to Study Literature. A novel, a poem, a history, a biography, a drama, an oration, a sermon, or any other literary production, if read or studied as this book tells one how to read and study, becomes a subject which one can discuss or write about in a thoroughly intelligent and comprehensive way. Enables you to talk about a book as if you had really sized it up completely. Just the thing for literary societies, reading circles, and the teacher and the pupil ; also for any one who desires to retain a symmetrical im- pression of the books he reads. 75 cents* Lessons on Manners. Mrs. Dewey. 75 cents. Lessons on Morals. Mrs. Dewey. 75 cents. Ethics for High Schools and Academies. $1.00* Character Building. Inspiring suggestions. $J.00. Bookkeeping Blanks at 30 cents per set. Five blank books to t&e set. Adapted for use with any text-book, — Elem. , Practical, or Com. School. Used everywhere. Constitution of U. S. in Eng., Germ , Fr. Paper, 50 eta. How to Become Quick at Figures. Enlarged Edition. $1.0Qt How to Prepare for a Civil Service Examination, with recent Examination Questions and the Answers. 560 pages. $2. 00. , Abridged Edition, without Questions and Answers. 50 cents. Craig's Common School Questions with Answers. Enlarged Edition. $1,50. Henry's High School Questions, with Answers. $1.50* Sherrill's New Normal Questions, with A nswers. $ \ .50. Qutezism and Its Key. (Southwick.) $1.00. 1001 Questions and Answers Series. Eleven Volumes, until recently published by the b. b. CO.. each 50 cts. Theory and Practice Teaching. Revised. United States History. Revised. General History. Revised,, Geography. Revised. English Grammar. Revised. Reading and Orthography. Revised. Physiology and Hygiene. Revised. Botany. New. Natural Philosophy. New. Arithmetic. Revised. Text Examples in Arith., with Answers. Revised. Morlt2*s 1000 Questions. For Entrance Examinations. N. Y. High Schools, Normal College, College of City of N. Y., St. Francis Xavier College, West Point. Annapolis, and Civil Service. Paper. 30 cents. Answers to same. Paper. 50 cents. Recent Entrance Examination Questions. For the New- York Normal College, the College of the City of New York, St. Francis Xavier College, Columbia College, the High Schools, Regents' Examinations, West Point, Annapolis, the Civil Service. Paper. 30 cts. Answers to Same. Paper. 50 cents. 20th Century Educational Problems* By President Millar of Hendrix Collecre. A timely discussion. $1.00. Interlinear Translations. Classic Series. Cloth. 20 vol- umes. $1.50 per volume. Caesar's Gallic War. Five Books. Same, Book I, Completely Parsed. See below. Cicero's Orations. Enlarged Edition. Same, Oration I, Completely Parsed. See below. Same, Oration II, Completely Parsed. Set below. Cicero on Old Age and Friendship. Cornelius Nepos. Horace, complete. Livy. Books XXI and XXII. Ovid's Metamorphoses, complete. Sallust's Catiline, and Jugurthine War. Virgil's ^Eneid. First Six Books, Revised. Virgil's vEneid. Complete, the Twelve Books. j"Eneid, Book I, Completely Parsed, Scanned. See below. Virgil's Eclogues, Gtorgxcsand Last 6 Books AZneid. Xenophon's Anabasis. Xenophon's Memorabilia. Homer's Iliad, First Six Books, Revised. Demosthenes On The Crown. New Testament, Without Notes; complete ed. below. Completely Parsed Caesar. Book 1. Each page bears interlinear translation, literal translation, parsing, grammatical references. The long vowels are indicated throughout, both in the Latin text part, and in the parsing. All at a glance without turning a leaf. An ideal aid, compact, complete, unique. $1.50. Completely Scanned-Parsed Vergil's Aeneid Bk. J. Iden- tical in plan, scope, and arrangement with the Parsed Ccesar, while being scanned as well as parsed. $1.50. Completely Parsed Cicero, I. The First Oration against Catiline. Same plan and scope as Parsed Cce sar. $ J .50* Completely Parsed Cicero, II. The Second Oration against Catiline. Same plan as above. $1.50. Completely Parsed Xenophon's Anab., I. $1.50. In prep. New Testament with Notes, and Lexicon. Interlinear Greek-Eng. , with King James Version in the margins. New edition with finely discriminating presentation of the Synonyms of the Greek Testament. Cloth, $4 ; half leather, $5 ; Divinity Circuit ', $6. Old Testament, Vol. J. Genesis and Exodus. Interlinear Hebrew-Eng., with Notes ; King James Version and Revised Version in margins ; and with Hebrew alphabet and Tables of the Hebrew verb. Cloth, #4 : half leather, $5 ; Divinity Circuit, $6.00. Hinds & Noble's Hebrew Grammar. $1*00. Handy Literal Translations* Cloth, pocket. 50 cts* per vol. " To one who is reading the Classics, a literal translation is a convenient and legitimate help: every well in/ormed person will read the Classics either in the original or in a translation. Eirhty-nine volumes, viz. : {Interlinear s other page). Csesar's Gallic War. The Seven Books. ( For Book I trans- lated and completely parsed, see other page.) Caesar's Civil War. Catullus. Cicero's Brutus. Cicero's Defense of Roscius. Cicero De Officiis. Cicero On Old Age and Friendship. Cicero On Oratory. Cicero On The Nature of The Gods. Cicero's Orations. Four vs. Catiline, and others. (For Orations I, II, translated and parsed, see other page.) Cicero's Select Letters. Cicero's Tusculan Disputations. Cornelius Nepos, complete. Eutropius. Horace, complete. { u venal' s Satires, complete. ,ivy, Books I and II. Livy, Books XXI and XXII. Lucretius, in preparation. Martial's Epigrams (paper)., Ovid's Metamorphoses, complete in two volumes. Phsedrus' Fables. Plautus' Captivi, and Mostellaria. Plautus' Pseudolus, and Miles Gloriosus. Plautus' Trinummus, and Mensechmi. Pliny's Select Letters, complete in two volumes. Quintilian, Books X and XII. Roman Life in Latin Prose and Verse. Sallust's Catiline, and the Jugurthine War. Seneca on Benefits. Tacitus' Annals, the First Six Books. Tacitus' Germany and Agricola. Tacitus' On Oratory. Terence: Andria, Adelphi and Phormio. Terence: Heautontimorumeno . Virgil's jEneid, the First Six Books. (For Book I translated and completely scanned and parsed, see other page.) Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics. Vin Romae. iEnchines Against Ctesiphon. jEschylus' Prometheus Bound ; Seven vs. Thebes. Aeschylus' Agamemnon. Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes' Birds, and Frogs. Demosthenes' On The Crown. Demosthenes' Olynthiacs and Philippics. Euripides' Alcestis, and Electra. Euripides' Bacchantes, and Hercules Furens. Euripides' Hecuba and Andromache, Euripides' Iphigenia In Auas, In Tauris. Euripides' Medea. Herodotus, Books VI and VII. Herodotus, Book VIII. Homer's Iliad, the First Six Books. Homer's Odyssey, the First Twelve Books. Jsocrates' Panegyric, in preparation. Lucian's Select Dialogues, two volumes. Lysias' Orations. The only Translation extant. Plato's Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. Plato's Gorgias. Plato's Laches {paper). Plato's Protagoras, and Euthyphron. Plato's Republic. Sophocles' OZdipus Tyrannus, Electra, and Antigone. Sophocles' GZdipus Coloneus. Thucydides, complete in two volumes. Xenophon's Anabasis, the First Four Books. (Book /, trans- lated and completely parsed, in prep. See other page.) Xenophon's Cyropaedia, complete in two volumes. Xenophon's Hellenica, and Symposium (The Banquet). Xenophon's Memorabilia, complete. Freytag's Die Journalisten (paper). Goethe's Egmont. Goethe's Faust. Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea. Goethe's Iphigenia in Tauris. Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm. Lessing's Nathan The Wise. Lessing's Emilia Galotti. Schiller's Ballads. Schiller's Der Neffe als Orlkel. Schiller's Maid of Orleans. Schiller's Maria Stuart. Schiller's Wallenstein's Death. Schiller's William Tell. Corneille's The Cid. Feuillet's Romance of a Poor Young Man. Racine's Athalie. Completely Parsed Caesar, Vergil, Cicero, etc*, other page. Shortest Road to Caesar* Successful elem'y method. 75c. Caesar's Idioms* Complete, with Eng. equivalents. Pap. 25c* Cicero's Idioms* As found in " Cicero's Orations." Pap. 25c* Beginners' Latin Book* Hoch & Bert's. Many improve- ments over other books for beginners, one being the diagram to illustrate conditional sentences. $1.00* Beginners' Greek Book. I. P. Frisbee. Complete in itself. Applies the principles of correct teaching to the preparation (in one year) for reading Xenophon's Anabasis. Fully tested in many schools . $1.25. German Texts. With footnotes and Vocabulary: W. Tell, Jungfrau v. Orleans, Maria Stuart, Neffe als Onkel, Minna v. Barnhelm, Nathan der Weise, Emilia Galotti, Herm. und Dorothea. Eight vols. 50cts.*tfM. Ideophonic Texts. Wilhelm Tell, Act I. $1,00. Dictionaries : The Classic Series, Half morocco. $, Espe- cially planned for students and teachers in colleges and high schools. Up to the times in point of contents, authoritative while modern as regards scholarship, instantly accessible in respect to arrange- ment, of best quality as to typography and paper, and in a binding at once elegant and durable. 8x5^ in. French-English and English-French Dictionary, 1 122 pages. $2,00. German-English and English-German Dictionary, 1 1 12 pages. $2.00. Latin-English and English-Latin Dictionary, 941 pages. $2.00. Greek-English and English-Greek Dictionary, I056 pages. ^ $2,00. English-Greek Dictionary. Price $1.00. , Dictionaries : The Handy Series* "Scholarship modern and accurate; and really beautiful print." Pocket Edition. Spanish-English and Eng. -Span., 474 pages. $1.00. T talian-English and Eng.-Ital., 428 pages. $1.00. New Testament Lexicon. Entirely new and up-to-date. With a fine presentation of the Synonyms of the Greek Testament. $1.00. Liddell & Scott's Abridged Greek Lexicon. With new Appendix of Proper and Geographical names. $1.20. White's Latin-English Dictionary. $1.20. White's English-Latin Dictionary. $1,20. White's Latin-English and Eng.-Lat. Dictionary. $2.25. Casserly's Latin Prosody. New Edition. 60 cents. Brooks' Historia Sacra, with First Latin Lessons. Revised, with Vocabulary, Price 50 cts. This justly popular volume besides the Epitome Historise Sacrse, the Notes, and the Vocabulary, contains 100 pages of elementary Latin Lessons, enabling the teacher to carry the pupil quickly and in easy steps over the ground preparatory to the Epitome Historise Sacrae. Brooks' First Lessons in Greek, with Lexicon. Revised Edition. Covering sufficient ground to enable tb^ student to read the New Testament in the Greek. 50t Brooks' New Virgil's Aeneid. with Lexicon. Revised. Notes, Metrical Index, Map. With Questions. $1.50* Brooks' New Ovid's Metamorphoses, with Lexicon. , Expurgated for mixed classes. With Questions. $1.50. H 488 & M O VV 5 * * * *^r» O *o * * • A > *^rtf *bv* **o* > O. *o\ » * A <. I '"V 4 X o « e **« ^^ C »* ^ •^ o* % J^ Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce: ^, Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide <& *^> Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 ^p «£ •V\W>^* ^ a^ •* Preserv atianTechnologie ^^'"'™^S '' J^O • SVW<2?&i7y7> ° o#«* ♦* ** <* *'T;T* ,g ^ ,0* *-*'• > " • ^^ - • * - *' ^ fc. c** .^W/k*' «,. .,♦' & • ^^ v 4 ^ -^ .* A * y ^. 9* .. * • I « o t V -^ ^ii ^ %^wp* ^ ^ECKMAN "NDERY INC. 1985 ^T N- MANCHESTER, INDIANA 4696?