[Speech of Horace Porter at the seventy-fifth annual dinner of the
New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1880. "We
have been told here to-night," said the President, James C. Carter,
"that New York has been peopled by pilgrims of various races, and I
propose, as our next toast, 'The Pilgrims of Every Race.' And I
call upon our ever welcome friend, General Horace Porter, for a
response."]
MR. PRESIDENT:--I am here, like the rest of your guests, to-night, in
consequence of these notes of invitation that we have received. I know
it is always more gratifying to an audience for speakers to be able to
assure them, in the outset of their remarks, that they are here without
notes; but such is not my case. I received the following:
"The Committee of Arrangements of the New England Society respectfully
invite you to be present at the seventy-fifth anniversary of the
Society, and the two hundred and sixtieth of the landing of the Pilgrims
at Metropolitan Concert Hall." [Laughter.]
Such is the ignorance of those of us upon whom Providence did not
sufficiently smile to permit us to be born in New England, that I never
knew, until I received that note, anything about the landing of the
Pilgrims at Metropolitan Concert Hall. This certainly will be sad news
to communicate to those pious people who assembled in Brooklyn last
night, and who still rest happy in the belief that the Pilgrims landed
on Plymouth Church. [Laughter.] From the day they have chosen for the
anniversary, it seems very evident that the Pilgrims must have landed
somewhere one day before they struck Plymouth Rock. [Laughter.]
The poet Longfellow tells us, in one of his short poems, "learn to labor
and to wait." I have labored through about twenty-five courses at this
table, and then I have waited until this hour, in the hope that I might
be spared the inevitable ordeal. But when the last plate had been
removed, and your president, who is a stern man of duty, rapped upon the
table, I saw there was no escape, and the time had come when he was
going to present to you one of the most popular of all dishes at a New
England banquet, tongue garnished with brains. He seems, following the
late teachings of Harvard and Yale, to have invited the guests to enter
for a sort of skull-race. [Laughter.] Now, I suppose that, in calling
first upon those on his right and left, it is a matter of convenience
for himself, and he has acted from the same motives that actuated a
newly fledged dentist who, when his first patient applied, determined to
exercise all that genius and understanding which Boston men generally
exercise in the practice of their profession. The patient, coming from
the country, told him he wanted two back teeth, which he pointed out to
him, pulled. The dentist placed him in a chair, and in a few moments he
had pulled out his two front teeth. The patient left the chair, and it
occurred to him that the circumstance might be deemed of sufficient
importance to call the dentist's attention to it. He said, "I told you
to pull out these two back teeth." "Yes," said the dentist, "so you did;
but I found that the front ones were kind of handier to get at."
[Laughter and applause.] I suppose the reason your president called upon
those of us nearest the platform to-night was because he found us a
little handier to get at. But there is no use in speakers coming here
and pleading want of preparation, because, doubtless, the New Englanders
who expected to take part to-night might have been found at any time
within the last six months sitting under blue glass to enlarge their
ideas. [Laughter.] I ventured to say to the committee that, this being
such a large room, some of your speakers might not have a high enough
tone of voice to be heard at the other end. They looked unutterable
things at me, as much as to say that at New England dinners I would
find the speakers could not be otherwise than high-toned. [Laughter.]
The first New Englander I ever had the pleasure to listen to was a
Pilgrim from Boston, who came out to the town in Pennsylvania, where I
lived, to deliver a lecture. We all went to the lecture. We were told it
was worth twice the price of admission to see that man wipe the corners
of his mouth with his handkerchief before he commenced to speak. Well,
he spoke for about two hours on the subject of the indestructibility of
the absolute in connection with the mutability of mundane affairs. The
pitch and variety of the nasal tones was wonderful, and he had an
amazing command of the longest nouns and adjectives. It was a beautiful
lecture. The town council tried to borrow it and have it set to music.
It was one of those lectures that would pay a man to walk ten miles in
wet feet--to avoid. After he got through, a gentleman in the audience,
thinking it the part of good nature, stepped up and congratulated him
upon his "great effort." The lecturer took it as a matter of course, and
replied, "Oh, yes, you will find the whole atmosphere of Boston
exhilarant with intellectual vitality." [Laughter.]
Now, if there is one thing which modern Pilgrims pride themselves upon
more than another, it is in being the lineal descendants of those who
came over by the Mayflower. To prove this, when you visit their homes,
they bring forth family records in the shape of knives, forks, and
spoons that were taken from the Mayflower. From the number of those
articles I have seen, I have come to the conclusion that the captain of
the Mayflower did not get back to England with a single article
belonging to the ship that was not nailed fast to the deck. Such a dread
have the people of that island of this widespread Puritanical
kleptomania attaching to people coming here, that even as late as 1812
the commander of one of the British frigates took the wise precaution to
nail his flag fast to the mast. [Laughter.]
We have heard that the Pilgrim fathers made amends for their
shortcomings, from the fact of their having determined, after landing,
to fill the meeting-houses and have worship there, and that brave men
were detailed from the congregation to stand sentinels against a
surprise by the Indians. It is even said that during those long and
solemn sermons some of the members vied with each other in taking their
chances with the Indians outside. Some of these acts of heroism
re-appear in the race. I have been told that some of the lineal
descendants of these hardy men that paced up and down in front of the
meeting-house have recently been seen pacing up and down all night in
front of the Globe Theatre, in Boston, ready in the morning to take
their chance of the nearest seat for Sara Bernhardt's performance.
[Laughter.]
Now, sir, the New Englanders are eminently reformers. I have never seen
anything they did not attempt to reform. They even introduced the
Children of the Sun to the shoe-shops of Lynn, with the alleged purpose
of instructing the Chinese in letters, yet recently in Massachusetts
they themselves showed such lamentable ignorance as not to know a
Chinese letter when they saw it. [Laughter.] But the poor Chinese have
been driven away. They have been driven away from many places by that
formidable weapon--the only weapon which Dennis Kearney has ever been
able to use against them--the Chinese must-get. [Laughter.]
I have never seen but one thing the Yankee could not reform, and that
was the line of battle at Bull Run, and I call upon Pilgrim Sherman as a
witness to this. He was there, and knows. Bulls have given as much
trouble to Yankees as to Irishmen. Bulls always seem to be associated
with Yankee defeat, from the time of Bull Run down to Sitting Bull, and
I will call upon Pilgrim Miles as a witness to that.
Now, gentlemen, let me say that the presence of General Grant to-night
will enable you to settle forever that question which has vexed the New
England mind all the period during which he was making his triumphal
journey round the globe--the question as to whether, in his intercourse
with kings and potentates, he was always sure to keep in sufficient
prominence the merits of the Pilgrim fathers, and more especially of
their descendants. I have no doubt he did. I have no doubt that to those
crowned heads, with numerous recalcitrant subjects constantly raising
Cain in their dominions, the recital of how the Pilgrims went
voluntarily to a distant country to live, where their scalps were in
danger, must have been a pleasant picture. [Laughter.]
If I am to have any reputation for brevity I must now close these
remarks. I remember a lesson in brevity I once received in a barber's
shop. An Irishman came in, and the unsteady gait with which he
approached the chair showed that he had been imbibing of the produce of
the still run by North Carolina Moonshiners. He wanted his hair cut, and
while the barber was getting him ready, went off into a drunken sleep.
His head got bobbing from one side to the other, and at length the
barber, in making a snip, cut off the lower part of his ear. The barber
jumped about and howled, and a crowd of neighbors rushed in. Finally the
demonstration became so great that it began to attract the attention of
the man in the chair, and he opened one eye and said, "Wh-wh-at's the
matther wid yez?" "Good Lord!" said the barber, "I've cut off the whole
lower part of your ear." "Have yez? Ah, thin, go on wid yer bizness--it
was too long, anyhow!" [Laughter.] If I don't close this speech, some
one of the company will be inclined to remark that it has been too long,
anyhow. [Cheers and laughter.]
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