_This day, thirteen years ago, a new French ambassador presented his
credentials. The ambassador was not very old for an ambassador. The
President was very young for a president, the youngest, in fact, the
United States ever had. Both, according to custom, read set speeches,
and there followed a first conversation, which had a great many
successors, touching on a variety of subjects not connected, all of
them, with diplomacy. In which talk took part the genial, learned, and
warm-hearted author of the "Pike County Ballads" and of the Life of
Lincoln, present at the meeting as Secretary of State of the United
States._
_This was the first direct impression the newcomer had of broad-minded,
strenuous America, his earliest ones, as a child, having been derived
from the illustrated weekly paper received by his family, and which
offered to view fancy pictures of the battles between the bearded
soldiers of Grant and Lee, the "poilus" of those days; another
impression was from Cooper's tales, Deerslayer sharing with Ivanhoe the
enthusiasm of the young people at the family hearth. Another American
impression was received by them a little later, when, the Republic
having been proclaimed, the street where the family had their winter
home ceased to be called "Rue de la Reine" and became "Rue Franklin."_
_Thirteen years is a long space of time in an ambassador's life; it is
not an insignificant one in the life of such a youthful nation as the
United States; I have now witnessed the eleventh part of that life.
Something like one-fourth or one-fifth of the population has been added
since I began service here. There were forty-five States then instead of
forty-eight; the commercial intercourse with France was half of what it
is now; the tonnage of the American navy was less than half what it is
at present; the Panama Canal was not yet American; the aeroplane was
unknown; the automobile practically unused. Among artists, thinkers,
humorists, critics, scientists, shone La Farge, McKim, Saint-Gaudens,
William James, Mark Twain, Furness, Newcomb, Weir Mitchell, who, leaving
a lasting fame, have all passed away._
_The speech at the White House was followed by many others. Little
enough accustomed, up to then, to addressing any assembly at any time, I
did not expect to have much to do in that line; but I had. I soon found
that it was not a question of taste and personal disposition, but one of
courtesy and friendliness. The quick-witted, kindly-disposed,
warm-hearted audiences of America, ever ready to show appreciation for
any effort, greatly facilitated matters._
_I was thus led by degrees to address gatherings of many kinds, in many
places, on many subjects, from the origins of the War of Independence to
reforestation in America, and from the Civil War to infantile mortality.
Many such speeches had to be delivered impromptu; others, luckily for
both orator and listeners, were on subjects which the former had
studied with as much care as the fulfilling of a variety of tasks and
duties had allowed him._
_An examination of the development of the two countries will, I believe,
lead any impartial mind to the conclusion that, with so many peculiar
ties between them in the past, a similar goal ahead of them, and, to a
great extent, similar hard problems to solve, it cannot but be of
advantage to themselves and to the liberal world that the two Republics
facing each other across the broad ocean, one nearly half a century old,
the other three times as much, should ever live on terms of amity, not
to say intimacy, comparing experiences, of help to one another whenever
circumstances allow: this they have been on more than one occasion, and
will doubtless be again in the future. During our present trials the
active generosity of American men and women has exerted itself in a way
that can never be forgotten._
_The dean now, not only of the diplomatic corps in Washington, but of
all my predecessors from the early days, when, on a raised platform in
Independence Hall, my diplomatic ancestor, Gérard de Rayneval,
presented to Congress the first credentials brought here from abroad
(and Gérard was then, he alone, the whole diplomatic body), I have
presumed to gather together a few studies on some of the men or events
of most interest from the point of view of Franco-American relations.
Three addresses are added, just as they were delivered. May these pages
find among readers the same indulgent reception their author found among
listeners._
_And so, having now lived in America thirteen years, offering good
wishes to the forty-eight of to-day, I dedicate, in memory of former
times, the following pages_
TO
THE THIRTEEN ORIGINAL STATES.