[Speech of Horace Porter at the fourth annual dinner of the
Poughkeepsie District Members of the Holland Society of New York,
October 3, 1893. The banquet was held in commemoration of the
relief of the siege of Leyden, 1574. J. William Beekman, the
President, introduced General Porter as follows: "Gentlemen, we
will now proceed to a toast that we shall all enjoy, I am sure,
after so much has been said about the Dutch. This toast is to be
responded to by a gentleman whom we all know. It is hardly
necessary to introduce him. But I will read the sentiment attached
to this toast: 'The American: Formed of the blendings of the best
strains of Europe, he cannot be worthy of his ancestry without
combining in himself the best qualities of them all.' And I call
upon General Horace Porter to respond."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--We speakers have naturally been a
little embarrassed at the outset this evening, for just as we were about
to break into speech, your President reminded us that the only one
worthy of having a monument built to his memory was William the Silent.
Well, it seemed to carry me back to those ancient days of Greece, when
Pythagoras inaugurated his School of Silence, and called on Damocles to
make the opening speech.
Your President has shown from the start this evening that he is
determined to enforce discipline, totally regardless of previous
acquaintance. He appears to have been in a Shakespearian mood to-night.
He seemed to be looking at each one of these alleged speakers and saying
of him: "Therefore, I'll watch him till he be dieted to my request and
then I will set upon him." But he must remember that Shakespeare also
said: "Dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits."
I do not know how the rest of you feel, but after these delicious but
somewhat plethoric dinners, I feel very much like Mr. Butterby, when his
lavender-colored trousers were sent to him the night before his wedding,
and he returned them to the tailor with a note saying, "Let them out two
inches around the waist, which will leave a margin for emotion and the
wedding breakfast." [Laughter.]
Now, we speakers to-night cannot expect to be received with any vast
ebullition of boisterous enthusiasm here, for we understand that every
member pays for his own wine. Besides, I am sure that you will not be
likely to get any more ideas from me than you would get lather from a
cake of hotel soap.
After having wrestled with about thirty dishes at this dinner, and after
all this being called upon to speak, I feel a great sympathy with that
woman in Ireland who had had something of a field-day on hand. She began
by knocking down two somewhat unpopular agents of her absentee landlord,
and was seen, later in the day, dancing a jig on the stomach of the
prostrate form of the Presbyterian minister. One of her friends admired
her prowess in this direction and invited her in, and gave her a good
stiff glass of whiskey. Her friend said, "Shall I pour some water in
your whiskey?" and the woman replied, "For God's sake, haven't I had
trouble enough already to-day?" [Laughter.]
I am a little at a loss still to know how I got into this company
to-night. I begin to feel like some of those United States Senators who,
after they have reached Washington, look around and wonder how they got
there. The nearest approach to being decorated with a sufficiently
aristocratic epithet to make me worthy of admission to this Society was
when I used to visit outside of my native State and be called a
"Pennsylvania Dutchman." But history tells us that at the beginning of
the Revolution there was a battle fought at Breed's Hill, and it was
called the Battle of Bunker Hill, because it was not fought there; and I
suppose I have been brought into this Dutch Society to-night because I
am not a Dutchman. [Laughter.]
I have great admiration for these Dutchmen; they always get to the
front. When they appear in New York they are always invited to seats on
the roof; when they go into an orchestra, they are always given one of
the big fiddles to play; and when they march in a procession, they are
always sure to get a little ahead of the band. This Society differs
materially from other so-called foreign societies. When we meet the
English, we invariably refer to the common stock from which we sprang,
but in the Dutch Society the stock is always preferred! and when a
Dutchman dies, why, his funeral is like that funeral of Abel, who was
killed by his brother Cain--no one is allowed to attend unless he
belongs to a first family. [Laughter.]
Now, a Dutchman is only happy when he gets a "Van" attached to the front
of his name, and a "dam" to the rear end of the city from which his
ancestors came. I notice they are all very particular about the "dam."
[Laughter.]
There was a lady--a New York young lady--who had been spending several
years in England and had just returned. She had posed awhile as a
professional beauty. Then she attempted to marry into the aristocracy,
but the market for titles was a little dull that year and she came home.
She had lived there long enough to become an Anglomaniac. She met a
Dutchman in New York--I think he was a member of the Holland
Society--and she said: "Everything seems so remarkably commonplace here,
after getting back from England; I am sure you must admit that there is
nothing so romantic here as in England." The Dutchman remarked: "Well, I
don't know about that." She said: "I was stopping at a place in the
country, with one of the members of the aristocracy, and there was a
little piece of water--a sort of miniature lake, as it were--so sweet.
The waters were confined by little rustic walls, so to speak, and that
was called the 'Earl's Oath'; we have nothing so romantic in New York,
I'm sure." Said the Dutchman: "Oh, yes, here we have McComb's Dam."
[Laughter.]
But, Mr. President, I certainly am in earnest sympathy with the
patriotic sentiment expressed in the toast which you have been pleased
to assign to me to-night, saying, in effect, that the American is
composed of the best strains of Europe, and the American cannot be
worthy of his ancestors unless he aims to combine within himself the
good qualities of all. America has gained much by being the conglomerate
country that she is, made up of a commingling of the blood of other
races. It is a well-known fact in the crossing of breeds that the best
traits predominate in the result. We in this land, have gained much from
the purity of those bloods; we have suffered little from the taint.
It is well in this material age, when we are dwelling so much upon
posterity, not to be altogether oblivious to pedigree. It has been well
said that he who does not respect his ancestors will never be likely to
achieve anything for which his descendants will respect him. Man learns
but very little in this world from precept; he learns something from
experience; he learns much from example, and the "best teachers of
humanity are the lives of worthy men."
We have a great many admirable so-called foreign societies in New York,
and they are all doing good work--good work in collecting interesting
historical data in regard to the ancestors who begat them; in regard to
the lands from which they came--good work in the broad field of charity.
But it is the Holland Society which seems to be a little closer to us
than the others--more _our_ Society, even with those of us who have no
Dutch blood in our veins. We feel that these old Dutch names are really
more closely associated in our minds with the city of New York than with
Holland itself.
The men from whom you sprang were well calculated to carry on the great
work undertaken by them. In the first place, in that good old land they
had educated the conscience. The conscience never lost its hold upon the
man. He stood as firm in his convictions as the rock to its base. His
religion was a religion of the soul, and not of the senses. He might
have broken the tables of stone on which the laws were written; he never
would have broken those laws themselves. He turned neither to the past
with regret nor to the future with apprehension. He was a man inured to
trials; practised in self-abnegation; educated in the severe school of
adversity; and that little band which set out from Holland to take up
its career in the New World was well calculated to undertake the work
which Providence had marked out for them. Those men had had breathed
into their nostrils at their very birth the true spirit of liberty.
Somehow or other liberty seemed to be indigenous in that land. They
imbibed that true spirit of liberty which does not mean unbridled
license of the individual, but that spirit of liberty which can turn
blind submission into rational obedience; that spirit of liberty which
Hall says stifles the voices of kings, dissipates the mists of
superstition, kindles the flames of art, and pours happiness into the
laps of the people. Those men started out boldly upon the ocean; they
paused not until they dipped the fringes of their banners in the waters
of the western seas. They built up this great metropolis. They bore
their full share in building up this great nation and in planting in it
their pure principles. They builded even better than they knew.
In the past year I think our people have been more inclined than ever
before to pause and contemplate how big with events is the history of
this land. It was developed by people who believed not in the "divine
right of kings," but in the divine right of human liberty. If we may
judge the future progress of this land by its progress in the past, it
does not require that one should be endowed with prophetic vision to
predict that in the near future this young but giant Republic will
dominate the policy of the world. America was not born amidst the
mysteries of barbaric ages; and it is about the only nation which knows
its own birthday. Woven of the stoutest fibres of other lands, nurtured
by a commingling of the best blood of other races, America has now cast
off the swaddling-clothes of infancy, and stands forth erect, clothed in
robes of majesty and power, in which the God who made her intends that
she shall henceforth tread the earth; and to-day she may be seen moving
down the great highways of history, teaching by example; moving at the
head of the procession of the world's events; marching in the van of
civilized and christianized liberty, her manifest destiny to light the
torch of liberty till it illumines the entire pathway of the world, and
till human freedom and human rights become the common heritage of
mankind. [Applause.]
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