[Speech of Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage at the eighty-first annual
dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December
22, 1886. The President of the Society, Judge Horace Russell,
introduced Dr. Talmage to speak to the toast, "Forefathers' Day."]
MR. PRESIDENT, AND ALL YOU GOOD NEW ENGLANDERS: If we leave to
the evolutionists to guess where we came from and to the theologians to
prophesy where we are going to, we still have left for consideration the
fact that we are here; and we are here at an interesting time. Of all
the centuries this is the best century, and of all the decades of the
century this is the best decade, and of all the years of the decade this
is the best year, and of all the months of the year this is the best
month, and of all the nights of the month this is the best night.
[Applause and laughter.] Many of these advantages we trace straight back
to Forefathers' Day, about which I am to speak.
But I must not introduce a new habit into these New England dinners and
confine myself to the one theme. For eighty-one years your speakers have
been accustomed to make the toast announced the point from which they
start, but to which they never return. [Laughter.] So I shall not stick
to my text, but only be particular to have all I say my own, and not
make the mistake of a minister whose sermon was a patchwork from a
variety of authors, to whom he gave no credit. There was an intoxicated
wag in the audience who had read about everything, and he announced the
authors as the minister went on. The clergyman gave an extract without
any credit to the author, and the man in the audience cried out:
"That's Jeremy Taylor." The speaker went on and gave an extract from
another author without credit for it, and the man in the audience said:
"That is John Wesley." The minister gave an extract from another author
without credit for it, and the man in the audience said: "That is George
Whitefield." When the minister lost his patience and cried out, "Shut
up, you old fool!" the man in the audience replied: "That is your own."
[Laughter.]
Well, what about this Forefathers' Day? In Brooklyn they say the Landing
of the Pilgrims was December the 21st; in New York you say it was
December the 22d. You are both right. Not through the specious and
artful reasoning you have sometimes indulged in, but by a little
historical incident that seems to have escaped your attention. You see,
the Forefathers landed in the morning of December the 21st, but about
noon that day a pack of hungry wolves swept down the bleak American
beach looking for a New England dinner [laughter], and a band of savages
out for a tomahawk picnic hove in sight, and the Pilgrim Fathers thought
it best for safety and warmth to go on board the Mayflower and pass the
night. [Renewed laughter.] And during the night there came up a strong
wind blowing off shore that swept the Mayflower from its moorings clear
out to sea, and there was a prospect that our Forefathers, having
escaped oppression in foreign lands, would yet go down under an oceanic
tempest. But the next day they fortunately got control of their ship and
steered her in, and the second time the Forefathers stepped ashore.
Brooklyn celebrated the first landing; New York the second landing. So I
say Hail! Hail! to both celebrations, for one day, anyhow, could not do
justice to such a subject; and I only wish I could have kissed the
blarney stone of America, which is Plymouth Rock, so that I might have
done justice to this subject. [Laughter and applause.] Ah, gentlemen,
that Mayflower was the ark that floated the deluge of oppression, and
Plymouth Rock was the Ararat on which it landed.
But let me say that these Forefathers were of no more importance than
the Foremothers. [Applause.] As I understand it, there were eight of
them--that is, four fathers and four mothers--from whom all these
illustrious New Englanders descended. Now I was not born in New England,
though far back my ancestors lived in Connecticut, and then crossed over
to Long Island and there joined the Dutch, and that mixture of Yankee
and Dutch makes royal blood. [Applause.] Neither is perfect without the
other, the Yankee in a man's nature saying "Go ahead!" the Dutch in his
blood saying, "Be prudent while you do go ahead!" Some people do not
understand why Long Island was stretched along parallel with all of the
Connecticut coast. I have no doubt that it was so placed that the Dutch
might watch the Yankees. [Laughter.]
But though not born in New England, in my boyhood I had a New England
schoolmaster, whom I shall never forget. He taught us our A, B, C's.
"What is that?" "I don't know, sir." "That's A" [with a slap]. "What is
that?" "I don't know, sir." [With a slap]--"That is B." [Laughter.] I
tell you, a boy that learned his letters in that way never forgot them;
and if the boy was particularly dull, then this New England schoolmaster
would take him over the knee, and then the boy got his information from
both directions. [Renewed laughter.]
But all these things aside, no one sitting at these tables has higher
admiration for the Pilgrim Fathers than I have--the men who believed in
two great doctrines, which are the foundation of every religion that is
worth anything: namely, the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of
Man--these men of backbone and endowed with that great and magnificent
attribute of stick-to-it-iveness. Macaulay said that no one ever sneered
at the Puritans who had met them in halls of debate or crossed swords
with them on the field of battle. [Applause.] They are sometimes defamed
for their rigorous Sabbaths, but our danger is in the opposite direction
of no Sabbaths at all. It is said that they destroyed witches. I wish
that they had cleared them all out, for the world is full of witches
yet, and if at all these tables there is a man who has not sometimes
been bewitched, let him hold up his glass of ice-water. [Laughter.] It
is said that these Forefathers carried religion into everything, and
before a man kissed his wife he asked a blessing, and afterward said:
"Having received another favor from the Lord, let us return thanks."
[Laughter.] But our great need now is more religion in every-day life.
I think their plain diet had much to do with their ruggedness of nature.
They had not as many good things to eat as we have, and they had better
digestion. Now, all the evening some of our best men sit with an awful
bad feeling at the pit of their stomach, and the food taken fails to
assimilate, and in the agitated digestive organs the lamb and the cow
lie down together and get up just as they have a mind to. [Laughter.]
After dinner I sat down with my friend to talk. He had for many years
been troubled with indigestion. I felt guilty when I insisted on his
taking that last piece of lemon pie. I knew that pastry always made him
crusty. I said to him: "I never felt better in all my life; how do you
feel?" And putting one hand over one piece of lemon pie and the other
hand over the other piece of lemon pie, he said: "I feel miserable."
Smaller varieties of food had the old Fathers, but it did them more
good.
Still, take it all in all, I think the descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers are as good as their ancestors, and in many ways better.
Children are apt to be an echo of their ancestors. We are apt to put a
halo around the Forefathers, but I expect that at our age they were very
much like ourselves. People are not wise when they long for the good old
days. They say: "Just think of the pride of people at this day! Just
look at the ladies' hats!" [Laughter.] Why, there is nothing in the
ladies' hats of to-day equal to the coal-scuttle hats a hundred years
ago. They say: "Just look at the way people dress their hair!" Why, the
extremest style of to-day will not equal the top-knots which our
great-grandmothers wore, put up with high combs that we would have
thought would have made our great-grandfathers die with laughter. The
hair was lifted into a pyramid a foot high. On the top of that tower lay
a white rose. Shoes of bespangled white kid, and heels two or three
inches high. Grandfather went out to meet her on the floor with a coat
of sky-blue silk and vest of white satin embroidered with gold lace,
lace ruffles around his wrist and his hair flung in a queue. The great
George Washington had his horse's hoofs blackened when about to appear
on a parade, and writes to Europe ordering sent for the use of himself
and family, one silver-lace hat, one pair of silver shoe-buckles, a
coat made of fashionable silk, one pair of gold sleeve-buttons, six
pairs of kid gloves, one dozen most fashionable cambric
pocket-handkerchiefs, besides ruffles and tucker. That was George.
[Laughter.]
Talk about dissipations, ye who have ever seen the old-fashioned
sideboard! Did I not have an old relative who always, when visitors
came, used to go upstairs and take a drink through economical habits,
not offering anything to his visitors? [Laughter.] On the old-fashioned
training days the most sober men were apt to take a day to themselves.
Many of the familiar drinks of to-day were unknown to them, but their
hard cider, mint julep, metheglin, hot toddy, and lemonade in which the
lemon was not at all prominent, sometimes made lively work for the
broad-brimmed hats and silver knee-buckles. Talk of dissipating parties
of to-day and keeping of late hours! Why, did they not have their "bees"
and sausage-stuffings and tea-parties and dances, that for heartiness
and uproar utterly eclipsed all the waltzes, lanciers, redowas, and
breakdowns of the nineteenth century, and they never went home till
morning. And as to the old-time courtships, oh, my! Washington Irving
describes them. [Laughter.]
But though your Forefathers may not have been much, if any, better than
yourselves, let us extol them for the fact that they started this
country in the right direction. They laid the foundation for American
manhood. The foundation must be more solid and firm and unyielding than
any other part of the structure. On that Puritanic foundation we can
safely build all nationalities. [Applause.] Let us remember that the
coming American is to be an admixture of all foreign bloods. In about
twenty-five or fifty years the model American will step forth. He will
have the strong brain of the German, the polished manners of the French,
the artistic taste of the Italian, the stanch heart of the English, the
steadfast piety of the Scotch, the lightning wit of the Irish, and when
he steps forth, bone, muscle, nerve, brain entwined with the fibres of
all nationalities, the nations will break out in the cry: "Behold the
American!" [Applause.]
Columbus discovered only the shell of this country. Agassiz came and
discovered fossiliferous America. Silliman came and discovered
geological America. Audubon came and discovered bird America. Longfellow
came and discovered poetic America; and there are a half-dozen other
Americas yet to be discovered.
I never realized what this country was and is as on the day when I first
saw some of these gentlemen of the Army and Navy. It was when at the
close of the War our armies came back and marched in review before the
President's stand at Washington. I do not care whether a man was a
Republican or a Democrat, a Northern man or a Southern man, if he had
any emotion of nature, he could not look upon it without weeping. God
knew that the day was stupendous, and He cleared the heaven of cloud and
mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for the
returning warriors to pass under. From Arlington Heights the spring
foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and the
sparkling waters of the Potomac tossed their gold to the feet of the
battalions as they came to the Long Bridge and in almost interminable
line passed over. The Capitol never seemed so majestic as that morning:
snowy white, looking down upon the tides of men that came surging down,
billow after billow. Passing in silence, yet I heard in every step the
thunder of conflicts through which they had waded, and seemed to see
dripping from their smoke-blackened flags the blood of our country's
martyrs. For the best part of two days we stood and watched the filing
on of what seemed endless battalions, brigade after brigade, division
after division, host after host, rank beyond rank; ever moving, ever
passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp--thousands after
thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns solid, shoulder to
shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril.
Commanders on horses with their manes entwined with roses, and necks
enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the
line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white,
standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of
hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!"
Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon
wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of
the crushed and the dying that they had carried. These men came from
balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed
to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen. Those
came out of the coal-shafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side in one great
cause, consecrated through fire and storm and darkness, brothers in
peril, on their way home from Chancellorsville and Kenesaw Mountain and
Fredericksburg, in lines that seemed infinite they passed on.
We gazed and wept and wondered, lifting up our heads to see if the end
had come, but no! Looking from one end of that long avenue to the other,
we saw them yet in solid column, battery front, host beyond host, wheel
to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, coming as it were from
under the Capitol. Forward! Forward! Their bayonets, caught in the sun,
glimmered and flashed and blazed, till they seemed like one long river
of silver, ever and anon changed into a river of fire. No end to the
procession, no rest for the eyes. We turned our heads from the scene,
unable longer to look. We felt disposed to stop our ears, but still we
heard it, marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp. But hush,--uncover
every head! Here they pass, the remnant of ten men of a full regiment.
Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on and wring their hands. But
wheel into line, all ye people! North, South, East, West--all decades,
all centuries, all millenniums! Forward, the whole line! Huzza! Huzza!
[Great applause.]
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