I BELIEVE in the medicine of mirth, and in what I might call the
longevity of laughter. Every man who has caused real, true, honest
mirth, has been a benefactor of the human race. In a world like this,
where there is so much trouble--a world gotten up on such a poor
plan--where sometimes one is almost inclined to think that the Deity, if
there be one, played a practical joke--to find, I say, in such a world,
something that for the moment allows laughter to triumph over sorrow,
is a great piece of good fortune. I like the stage, not only because
General Sherman likes it--and I do not think I was ever at the theatre
in my life but I saw him--I not only like it because General Washington
liked it, but because the greatest man that ever touched this grain of
sand and tear we call the world, wrote for the stage, and poured out
a very Mississippi of philosophy and pathos and humor, and everything
calculated to raise and ennoble mankind.
I like to see the stage honored, because actors are the ministers, the
apostles, of the greatest man who ever lived, and because they put
flesh upon and blood and passion within the greatest characters that
the greatest man drew. This is the reason I like the stage. It makes us
human. A rascal never gained applause on the stage. A hypocrite never
commanded admiration, not even when he was acting a clergyman--except
for the naturalness of the acting. No one has ever yet seen any play
in which, in his heart, he did not applaud honesty, heroism, sincerity,
fidelity, courage, and self-denial. Never. No man ever heard a great
play who did not get up a better, wiser, and more humane man; and no man
ever went to the theatre and heard Robson and Crane, who did not go home
better-natured, and treat his family that night a little better than on
a night when he had not heard these actors.
I enjoy the stage; I always did enjoy it. I love the humanity of it. I
hate solemnity; it is the brother of stupidity--always. You never knew a
solemn man who was not stupid, and you never will. There never was a
man of true genius who had not the simplicity of a child, and over whose
lips had not rippled the river of laughter--never, and there never will
be. I like, I say, the stage for its wit and for its humor. I do not
like sarcasm; I do not like mean humor. There is as much difference
between humor and malicious wit as there is between a bee's honey and
a bee's sting, and the reason I like Robson and Crane is that they have
the honey without the sting.
Another thing that makes me glad is, that I live in an age and
generation and day that has sense enough to appreciate the stage; sense
enough to appreciate music; sense enough to appreciate everything
that lightens the burdens of this life. Only a few years ago our dear
ancestors looked upon the theatre as the vestibule of hell; and every
actor was going "the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire." In those
good old days, our fathers, for the sake of relaxation, talked about
death and graves and epitaphs and worms and shrouds and dust and hell.
In those days, too, they despised music, cared nothing for art; and
yet I have lived long enough to hear the world--that is, the civilized
world--say that Shakespeare wrote the greatest book that man has ever
read. I have lived long enough to see men like Beethoven and Wagner put
side by side with the world's greatest men--great in imagination--and we
must remember that imagination makes the great difference between men.
I have lived long enough to see actors placed with the grandest and
noblest, side by side with the greatest benefactors of the human race.
There is one thing in which I cannot quite agree with what has been
said. I like tragedy, because tragedy is only the other side of the
shield and I like both sides. I love to spend an evening on the twilight
boundary line between tears and smiles. There is nothing that pleases me
better than some scene, some act, where the smile catches the tears
in the eyes; where the eyes are almost surprised by the smile, and the
smile touched and softened by the tears. I like that. And the greatest
comedians and the greatest tragedians have that power; and, in
conclusion, let me say, that it gives me more than pleasure to
acknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe, not only to the stage, but to
the actors whose health we drink to-night.