[Speech of Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage at the seventh annual dinner
of the Holland Society of New York, January 14, 1892. The President
of the Society, George M. Van Hoesen, said: "The next regular toast
is: 'What I Know about the Dutch,' which will be responded to by a
gentleman who needs no introduction--the Rev. Dr. T. DeWitt
Talmage."]
Oh, Judge Van Hoesen, this is not the first time we have been side by
side, for we were college boys together; and I remember that there was
this difference between us--you seemed to know about everything, and it
would take a very large library, a library larger than the Vatican, to
tell all that I didn't know. It is good to be here. What a multitude of
delightful people there are in this world! If you and I had been
consulted as to which of all the stars we would choose to walk upon, we
could not have done a wiser thing than to select this. I have always
been glad that I got aboard this planet. There are three classes of
people that I especially admire--men, women, and children. I have
enjoyed this banquet very much, for there are two places where I always
have a good appetite--at home and away from home. I have not been
interfered with as were some gentlemen that I heard of at a public
dinner some years ago. A greenhorn, who had never seen a great banquet,
came to the city, and, looking through the door, said to his friends who
were showing him the sights: "Who are those gentlemen who are eating so
heartily?" The answer was: "They are the men who pay for the dinner."
"And who are those gentlemen up there on the elevation looking so pale
and frightened and eating nothing?" "Oh," said his friend, "those are
the fellows who make the speeches."
It is very appropriate that we should celebrate the Hollanders by hearty
eating, for you know the royal house that the Hollanders admire above
any other royal house, is named after one of the most delicious fruits
on this table--the house of Orange. I feel that I have a right to be
here. While I have in my arteries the blood of many nationalities, so
that I am a cosmopolitan and feel at home anywhere, there is in my veins
a strong tide of Dutch blood. My mother was a Van Nest, and I was
baptized in a Dutch church and named after a Dutch Domini, graduated at
a Dutch theological seminary, and was ordained by a Dutch minister,
married a Dutch girl, preached thirteen years in a Dutch church, and
always took a Dutch newspaper; and though I have got off into another
denomination, I am thankful to say that, while nearly all of our
denominations are in hot water, each one of them having on a big
ecclesiastical fight--and you know when ministers do fight, they fight
like sin--I am glad that the old Dutch Church sails on over unruffled
seas, and the flag at her masthead is still inscribed with "Peace and
good-will to men." Departed spirits of John Livingston and Gabriel
Ludlow, and Dr. Van Draken and magnificent Thomas de Witt, from your
thrones witness!
Gentlemen here to-night have spoken much already in regard to what
Holland did on the other side of the sea; and neither historian's pen,
nor poet's canto, nor painter's pencil nor sculptor's chisel, nor
orator's tongue, can ever tell the full story of the prowess of those
people. Isn't it strange that two of the smallest sections of the earth
should have produced most of the grandest history of the world?
Palestine, only a little over 100 miles in length, yet yielding the most
glorious event of all history; and little Holland, only about one
quarter of the size of the State of New Jersey, achieving wonderful
history and wonderful deeds not only at home, but starting an influence
under which Robert Burns wrote "A man's a man for a' that," and sending
across the Atlantic a thunder of indignation against oppression of which
the American Declaration of Independence, and Yorktown and Bunker Hill,
and Monmouth and Gettysburg, are only the echoes!
As I look across the ocean to-night, I say: England for manufactories,
Germany for scholarship, France for manners, Italy for pictures--but
Holland for liberty and for God! And leaving to other gentlemen to tell
that story--for they can tell it better than I can--I can to-night get
but little further than our own immediate Dutch ancestors, most of whom
have already taken the sacrament of the dust. Ah, what a glorious race
of old folks they were! May our right hand forget its cunning, and our
tongue cleave to the roof of the mouth, if we forget to honor their
memories! What good advice they gave us; and when they went away
forever--well, our emotions were a little different as we stood over the
silent forms of the two old folks. In one case I think the dominant
emotion was reverence. In the other case I think it was tenderness, and
a wish that we could go with her.--
"Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight;
Make me a child again, just for to-night!
Mother, come back from the echoless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore;
Kiss from my forehead the furrows of care,
Smooth the few silver threads out of my hair;
Over my slumbers a loving watch keep;--
Rock me to sleep, mother--rock me to sleep!"
My, my! doesn't the old Dutch home come back to us, and don't we see the
plain cap, and the large round spectacles, and the shoulders that stoop
from carrying our burden! Was there ever any other hand like hers to
wipe away a tear, or to bind up a wound; for when she put the
far-sighted spectacles clear up on her forehead, so that her eyes might
the nearer look at the wound, it felt better right away! And have we
ever since heard any music like that which she hushed us to sleep
with--could any prima donna sing as she could! And could any other face
so fill a room with light and comfort and peace!
Mr. President, Dutch blood is good blood. We do not propose to
antagonize any other to-night; but at our public dinners, about December
21st, we are very apt to get into the Mayflower and sail around the New
England coast. I think it will be good for us to-night to take another
boat quite as good, and sail around New York harbor in the Half-Moon.
I heard, years ago, the difference illustrated between the Yankee and
the Dutchman. There was an explosion on a Mississippi River steamboat;
the boiler burst, and the passengers were thrown into the air. After the
accident, the captain came around to inquire in regard to them, and he
found the Dutchman, but not the Yankee; and he said to the Dutchman,
"Did you see anything of that Yankee?" The Dutchman replied, "Oh, yes;
when I vas going up, he vas coming down." Now, the Dutch blood may not
be quite so quick as the Yankee, but it is more apt to be sure it is
right before it goes ahead. Dutch blood means patience, fidelity, and
perseverance. It means faith in God also. Yes, it means generosity. I
hardly ever knew a mean Dutchman. That man who fell down dead in my
native village couldn't have had any Dutch blood in him. He was over
eighty years of age, and had never given a cent to any benevolent object
during his life; but in a moment of weakness, when he saw a face of
distress, he gave a cent to an unfortunate man, and immediately dropped
dead; and the surgeon declared, after the post-mortem examination, that
he died of sudden enlargement of the heart. Neither is there any such
mean man among the Dutch as that man who was so economical in regard to
meat that he cut off a dog's tail and roasted it and ate the meat, and
then gave the bone back to the dog. Or that other mean man I heard of,
who was so economical that he used a wart on the back of his neck for a
collar-button. I have so much faith in Holland blood, that I declare the
more Hollanders come to this country the better we ought to like it.
Wherever they try to land, let them land on our American soil; for all
this continent is going to be after a while under one government. I
suppose you have noticed how the governments on the southern part of the
continent are gradually melting into our own; and soon the difficulty on
the north between Canada and the United States will be amicably settled
and the time will come when the United States Government will offer hand
and heart in marriage to beautiful and hospitable Canada; and when the
United States shall so offer its hand in marriage, Canada will blush and
look down, and, thinking of her allegiance across the sea, will say,
"Ask mother."
In a suggestive letter which the chairman of the committee wrote me,
inviting me to take part in this entertainment, he very beautifully and
potently said that the Republic of the Netherlands had given hospitality
in the days that are past to English Puritans and French Huguenots and
Polish refugees and Portuguese Jews, and prospered; and I thought, as I
read that letter, "Why, then, if the Republic of the Netherlands was so
hospitable to other nations, surely we ought to be hospitable to all
nations, especially to Hollanders." Oh, this absurd talk about "America
for Americans!" Why, there isn't a man here to-night that is not
descended from some foreigner, unless he is an Indian. Why, the native
Americans were Modocs, Chippewas, Cherokees, Chickasaws, and Seminoles,
and such like. Suppose, when our fathers were trying to come to this
country, the Indians had stood on Plymouth Rock and at the Highlands of
the Navesink, and when the Hollanders and the Pilgrim Fathers attempted
to land, had shouted, "Back with you to Holland and to England; America
for Americans!" Had that watchword been an early and successful cry,
where now stand our cities would have stood Indian wigwams; and canoes
instead of steamers would have tracked the Hudson and the Connecticut;
and, instead of the Mississippi being the main artery of the continent,
it would have been only a trough for deer and antelope and wild pigeons
to drink out of. What makes this cry of "America for the Americans" the
more absurd and the more inhuman is that some in this country, who
themselves arrived here in their boyhood or only one or two generations
back, are joining in the cry. Having escaped themselves into this
beautiful land, they say: "Shut the door of escape for others." Getting
themselves on our shores in the life-boat from the shipwreck, they say:
"Haul up the boat on the beach, and let the rest of the passengers go to
the bottom." Men who have yet on them a Holland, or Scotch, or German,
or English, or Irish brogue, are crying out: "America for the
Americans!" What if the native inhabitants of heaven (I mean the angels,
the cherubim, and the seraphim, for they were born there) should say to
us when we arrive there at last, "Go back. Heaven for the Heavenians!"
Of course, we do not want foreign nations to make this a convict colony.
We wouldn't let their thieves and anarchists land here, nor even wipe
their feet on the mat of the outside door of this continent. When they
send their criminals here, let us put them in chains and send them back.
This country must not be made the dumping-ground for foreign
vagabondism. But for the hard-working and industrious people who come
here, do not let us build up any wall around New York harbor to keep
them out, or it will after a while fall down with a red-hot thunderburst
of God's indignation. Suppose you are a father, and you have five
children. One is named Philip, and Philip says to his brothers and
sisters: "Now, John, you go and live in the small room at the end of the
hall. George, you go and stay up in the garret. Mary, you go and live in
the cellar, and Fannie, you go and live in the kitchen, and don't any of
you come out. I am Philip, and will occupy the parlor; I like it; I like
the lambrequins at the window, and I like the pictures on the wall. I am
Philip, and, being Philip, the parlor shall only be for the Philipians."
You, the father, come home, and you say: "Fannie, what are you doing in
the kitchen? Come out of there." And you say to Mary, "Mary, come out of
that cellar." And you say to John, "John, don't stay shut up in that
small room. Come out of there." And you say to George, "George, come
down out of that garret." And you say to the children, "This is my
house. You can go anywhere in it that you want to." And you go and haul
Philip out of the parlor, and you tell him that his brothers and sisters
have just as much right in there as he has, and that they are all to
enjoy it. Now, God is our Father, and this world is a house of several
rooms, and God has at least five children--the North American continent,
the South American continent, the Asiatic continent, the European
continent, and the African continent. The North American continent
sneaks away, and says: "I prefer the parlor. You South Americans,
Asiatics, Europeans, and Africans, you stay in your own rooms; this is
the place for me; I prefer it, and I am going to stay in the parlor; I
like the front windows facing on the Atlantic, and the side windows
facing on the Pacific, and the nice piazza on the south where the sun
shines, and the glorious view from the piazza to the north." And God,
the Father, comes in and sends thunder and lightning through the house,
and says to his son, the American continent: "You are no more my child
than are all these others, and they have just as much right to enjoy
this part of my house as you have."
It will be a great day for the health of our American atmosphere when
this race prejudice is buried in the earth. Come, bring your spades, and
let us dig a grave for it; and dig it deep down into the heart of the
earth, but not clear through to China, lest the race prejudice should
fasten the prejudice on the other side. Having got this grave deeply
dug, come, let us throw in all the hard things that have been said and
written between Jew and Gentile, between Protestant and Catholic,
between Turk and Russian, between French and English, between Mongolian
and anti-Mongolian, between black and white; and then let us set up a
tombstone and put upon it the epitaph: "Here lies the monster that
cursed the earth for nearly three thousand years. He has departed to go
to perdition, from which he started. No peace to his ashes."
From this glorious Holland dinner let us go out trying to imitate the
virtues of our ancestors, the men who built the Holland dikes, which are
the only things that ever conquered the sea, slapping it in the face and
making it go back. There was a young Holland engineer who was to be
married to a maiden living in one of the villages sheltered by these
dikes, and in the evening there was to be a banquet in honor of the
wedding, which was to be given to the coming bridegroom. But all day
long the sea was raging and beating against the dikes. And this engineer
reasoned with himself: "Shall I go to the banquet which is to be given
in my honor, or shall I go and join my workmen down on the dikes?" And
he finally concluded that it was his duty to go and join his workmen on
the dikes, and he went. And when the poor fellows toiling there saw that
their engineer was coming to help them, they set up a cheer. The
engineer had a rope put around him and was lowered down into the surf,
and other men came and had ropes put about them, and they were lowered
down. And after a while the cry was heard: "More mortar and more blocks
of stone!" But there were no more. "Now," said the Holland engineer,
"men, take off your clothes!" and they took them off, and they stopped
up the holes in the dikes. But still the stones were giving way against
the mighty wrath of the strong sea which was beating against them. And
then the Holland engineer said: "We cannot do any more. My men, get on
your knees and pray to God for help." And they got down on their knees
and they prayed; and the wind began to silence, and the sea began to
cease its angry wavings, and the wall was saved; and all the people who
lived in the village went on with the banquet and the dance, for they
did not know their peril, and they were all saved.
What you and I ought to do is to go out and help build up the dikes
against the ocean of crime and depravity and sin which threatens to
overwhelm this nation. Men of Holland, descend!--to the dikes! to the
dikes! Bring all the faith and all the courage of your ancestors to the
work, and then get down on your knees, and kneel with us on the creaking
wall, and pray to the God of the wind and of the sea that He may hush
the one and silence the other.