MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--I
suppose it was a matter of necessity, calling on some of us from other
States to speak for you to-night, for we have learned from the history
of Priscilla and John Alden, that a New Englander may be too modest to
speak for himself. [Laughter.] But this modesty, like some of the
greater blessings of the war, has been more or less disguised to-night.
We have heard from the eloquent gentleman [Noah Porter, D.D.] on my left
all about the good-fellowship and the still better fellowships in the
rival universities of Harvard and Yale. We have heard from my sculptor
friend [W. W. Story] upon the extreme right all about Hawthorne's tales,
and all the great Storys that have emanated from Salem; but I am not a
little surprised that in this age, when speeches are made principally by
those running for office, you should call upon one engaged only in
running cars, and more particularly upon one brought up in the military
service, where the practice of running is not regarded as strictly
professional. [Laughter.] It occurred to me some years ago that the
occupation of moving cars would be fully as congenial as that of
stopping bullets--as a steady business, so when I left Washington I
changed my profession. I know how hard it is to believe that persons
from Washington ever change their professions. [Laughter.] In this regal
age, when every man is his own sovereign, somebody had to provide
palaces, and, as royalty is not supposed to have any permanent abiding
place in a country like this, it was thought best to put these palaces
on wheels; and, since we have been told by reliable authority that
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," we thought it necessary to
introduce every device to enable those crowned heads to rest as easily
as possible. Of course we cannot be expected to do as much for the
travelling public as the railway companies. They at times put their
passengers to death. We only put them to sleep. We don't pretend that
all the devices, patents, and inventions upon these cars are due to the
genius of the management. Many of the best suggestions have come from
the travellers themselves, especially New England travellers.
[Laughter.]
Some years ago, when the bedding was not supposed to be as fat as it
ought to be, and the pillows were accused of being constructed upon the
homoeopathic principle, a New Englander got on a car one night. Now,
it is a remarkable fact that a New Englander never goes to sleep in one
of these cars. He lies awake all night, thinking how he can improve upon
every device and patent in sight. [Laughter.] He poked his head out of
the upper berth at midnight, hailed the porter and said, "Say, have you
got such a thing as a corkscrew about you?" "We don't 'low no drinkin'
sperits aboa'd these yer cars, sah," was the reply. "'Tain't that," said
the Yankee, "but I want to get hold onto one of your pillows that has
kind of worked its way into my ear." [Loud laughter.] The pillows have
since been enlarged.
I notice that, in the general comprehensiveness of the sentiment which
follows this toast, you allude to that large and liberal class of
patrons, active though defunct, known as "deadheads." It is said to be
a quotation from Shakespeare. That is a revelation. It proves
conclusively that Shakespeare must at one time have resided in the State
of Missouri. It is well-known that the term was derived from a practice
upon a Missouri railroad, where, by a decision of the courts, the
railroad company had been held liable in heavy damages in case of
accidents where a passenger lost an arm or a leg, but when he was killed
outright his friends seldom sued, and he never did; and the company
never lost any money in such cases. In fact, a grateful mother-in-law
would occasionally pay the company a bonus. The conductors on that
railroad were all armed with hatchets, and in case of an accident they
were instructed to go around and knock every wounded passenger in the
head, thus saving the company large amounts of money; and these were
reported to the general office as "deadheads," and in railway circles
the term has ever since been applied to passengers where no money
consideration is involved. [Laughter.]
One might suppose, from the manifestations around these tables for the
first three hours to-night, that the toast "Internal Improvements"
referred more especially to the benefiting of the true inwardness of the
New England men; but I see that the sentiment which follows contains
much more than human stomachs, and covers much more ground than cars. It
soars into the realms of invention. Unfortunately the genius of
invention is always accompanied by the demon of unrest. A New England
Yankee can never let well enough alone. I have always supposed him to be
the person specially alluded to in Scripture as the man who has found
out many inventions. If he were a Chinese Pagan, he would invent a new
kind of Joss to worship every week. You get married and settle down in
your home. You are delighted with everything about you. You rest in
blissful ignorance of the terrible discomforts that surround you, until
a Yankee friend comes to visit you. He at once tells you you mustn't
build a fire in that chimney-place; that he knows the chimney will
smoke; that if he had been there when it was built he could have shown
you how to give a different sort of flare to the flue. You go to read a
chapter in the family Bible. He tells you to drop that; that he has just
written an enlarged and improved version, that can just put that old
book to bed. [Laughter.] You think you are at least raising your
children in general uprightness; but he tells you if you don't go out at
once and buy the latest patented article in the way of steel leg-braces
and put on the baby, the baby will grow up bow-legged. [Laughter.] He
intimates, before he leaves, that if he had been around to advise you
before you were married, he could have got you a much better wife. These
are some of the things that reconcile a man to sudden death. [Continued
laughter and applause.]
Such occurrences as these, and the fact of so many New Englanders being
residents of this city and elsewhere, show that New England must be a
good place--to come from.
At the beginning of the war we thought we could shoot people rapidly
enough to satisfy our consciences, with single-loading rifles; but along
came the inventive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and
Gatling guns, and magazine guns--guns that carried a dozen shots at a
time. I didn't wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this direction by a
backwoods Virginian we captured one night. The first remark he made was,
"I would like to see one of them thar new-fangled weepons of yourn. They
tell me, sah, it's a most remarkable eenstrument. They say, sah, it's a
kind o' repeatable, which you can load it up enough on Sunday to fiah it
off all the rest of the week." [Laughter.] Then there was every sort of
new invention in the way of bayonets. Our distinguished Secretary of
State has expressed an opinion to-night that bayonets are bad things to
sit down on. Well, they are equally bad things to be tossed up on. If he
continues to hold up such terrors to the army, there will have to be
important modifications in the uniform. A soldier won't know where to
wear his breastplate. [Laughter.] But there have not only been
inventions in the way of guns, but important inventions in the way of
firing them. In these days a man drops on his back, coils himself up,
sticks up one foot, and fires off his gun over the top of his great toe.
It changes the whole stage business of battle. It used to be the man who
was shot, but now it is the man who shoots that falls on his back and
turns up his toes. [Laughter and applause.] The consequence is, that the
whole world wants American arms, and as soon as they get them they go
to war to test them. Russia and Turkey had no sooner bought a supply
than they went to fighting. Greece got a schooner-load, and, although
she has not yet taken a part in the struggle, yet ever since the digging
up of the lost limbs of the Venus of Milo, it has been feared that this
may indicate a disposition on the part of Greece generally to take up
arms. [Laughter and applause.]
But there was one inveterate old inventor that you had to get rid of,
and you put him on to us Pennsylvanians--Benjamin Franklin. [Laughter.]
Instead of stopping in New York, in Wall Street, as such men usually do,
he continued on into Pennsylvania to pursue his kiting operations. He
never could let well enough alone. Instead of allowing the lightning to
occupy the heavens as the sole theatre for its pyrotechnic displays, he
showed it how to get down on to the earth, and then he invented the
lightning-rod to catch it. Houses that had got along perfectly well for
years without any lightning at all, now thought they must have a rod to
catch a portion of it every time it came around. Nearly every house in
the country was equipped with a lightning-rod through Franklin's direct
agency. You, with your superior New England intelligence, succeeded in
ridding yourselves of him; but in Pennsylvania, though we have made a
great many laudable efforts in a similar direction, somehow or other we
have never once succeeded in getting rid of a lightning-rod agent.
[Laughter.] Then the lightning was introduced on the telegraph wires,
and now we have the duplex and quadruplex instruments, by which any
number of messages can be sent from opposite ends of the same wire at
the same time, and they all appear to arrive at the front in good order.
Electricians have not yet told us which messages lies down and which one
steps over it, but they all seem to bring up in the right camp without
confusion. I shouldn't wonder if this principle were introduced before
long in the operating of railroads. We may then see trains running in
opposite directions pass each other on a single-track road. [Laughter.]
There was a New England quartermaster in charge of railroads in
Tennessee, who tried to introduce this principle during the war. The
result was discouraging. He succeeded in telescoping two or three
trains every day. He seemed to think that the easiest way to shorten up
a long train and get it on a short siding was to telescope it. I have
always thought that if that man's attention had been turned in an
astronomical direction, he would have been the first man to telescope
the satellites of Mars. [Laughter.]
The latest invention in the application of electricity is the telephone.
By means of it we may be able soon to sit in our houses, and hear all
the speeches, without going to the New England dinner. The telephone
enables an orchestra to keep at a distance of miles away when it plays.
If the instrument can be made to keep hand-organs at a distance, its
popularity will be indescribable. The worst form I have ever known an
invention to take was one that was introduced in a country town, when I
was a boy, by a Yankee of musical turn of mind, who came along and
taught every branch of education by singing. He taught geography by
singing, and to combine accuracy of memory with patriotism, he taught
the multiplication-table to the tune of Yankee Doodle. [Laughter.] This
worked very well as an aid to the memory in school, but when the boys
went into business it often led to inconvenience. When a boy got a
situation in a grocery-store and customers were waiting for their
change, he never could tell the product of two numbers without
commencing at the beginning of the table and singing up till he had
reached those numbers. In case the customer's ears had not received a
proper musical training, this practice often injured the business of the
store. [Laughter.]
It is said that the Yankee has always manifested a disposition for
making money, but he never struck a proper field for the display of his
genius until we got to making paper money. [Laughter.] Then every man
who owned a printing-press wanted to try his hand at it. I remember that
in Washington ten cents' worth of rags picked up in the street would be
converted the next day into thousands of dollars.
An old mule and cart used to haul up the currency from the Printing
Bureau to the door of the Treasury Department. Every morning, as
regularly as the morning came, that old mule would back up and dump a
cart-load of the sinews of war at the Treasury. [Laughter.] A patriotic
son of Columbia, who lived opposite, was sitting on the doorstep of his
house one morning, looking mournfully in the direction of the mule. A
friend came along, and seeing that the man did not look as pleasant as
usual, said to him, "What is the matter? It seems to me you look kind of
disconsolate this morning." "I was just thinking," he replied, "what
would become of this government if that old mule was to break down."
[Laughter and applause.] Now they propose to give us a currency which is
brighter and heavier, but not worth quite as much as the rags. Our
financial horizon has been dimmed by it for some time, but there is a
lining of silver to every cloud. We are supposed to take it with 4121/2
grains of silver--a great many more grains of allowance. [Laughter.]
Congress seems disposed to pay us in the "dollar of our daddies"--in the
currency which we were familiar with in our childhood. Congress seems
determined to pay us off in something that is "child-like and Bland."
[Laughter and applause.] But I have detained you too long already.
[Cries of "No, no; go on!"]
Why, the excellent President of your Society has for the last five
minutes been looking at me like a man who might be expected, at any
moment, to break out in the disconsolate language of Bildad the Shuhite
to the patriarch Job, "How long will it be ere ye make an end of words?"
Let me say then, in conclusion, that, coming as I do from the unassuming
State of Pennsylvania, and standing in the presence of the dazzling
genius of New England, I wish to express the same degree of humility
that was expressed by a Dutch Pennsylvania farmer in a railroad car, at
the breaking out of the war. A New Englander came in who had just heard
of the fall of Fort Sumter, and he was describing it to the farmer and
his fellow-passengers. He said that in the fort they had an engineer
from New England, who had constructed the traverses, and the embrasures,
and the parapets in such a manner as to make everybody within the fort
as safe as if he had been at home; and on the other side, the
Southerners had an engineer who had been educated in New England, and he
had, with his scientific attainments, succeeded in making the batteries
of the bombarders as safe as any harvest field, and the bombardment had
raged for two whole days, and the fort had been captured, and the
garrison had surrendered, and not a man was hurt on either side. A great
triumph for science, and a proud day for New England education. Said the
farmer, "I suppose dat ish all right, but it vouldn't do to send any of
us Pennsylvany fellers down dare to fight mit does pattles. Like as not
ve vould shoost pe fools enough to kill somepody." [Loud applause and
laughter, and cries of "Go on; go on."]
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