1884-1885
I reached the fiftieth year of my life in December, 1883. In my long
residence in Brooklyn I had found it to be the healthiest city in the
world. It had always been a good place to live in--plenty of fresh air
blowing up from the sea--plenty of water rolling down through our
reservoirs--the Sabbaths too quiet to attract ruffianism.
Of all the men I have seen and heard and known, there were but a few
deep friendships that I depended upon. In February, 1884, I lost one of
these by the decease of Thomas Kinsella, a Brooklyn man of public
affairs, of singular patriotism and local pride.
Years ago, when I was roughly set upon by ecclesiastical assailants, he
gave one wide swing of his editorial scimitar, which helped much in
their ultimate annihilation. My acquaintance with him was slight at the
time, and I did not ask him to help me. I can more easily forget a wrong
done to me than I can forget a kindness. He was charitable to many who
never knew of it. By reason of my profession, there came to me many
stories of distress and want, and it was always Mr. Kinsella's hand that
was open to befriend the suffering. Bitter in his editorial
antagonisms, he was wide in his charities. One did not have to knock at
many iron gates to reach his sympathies.
Mr. Kinsella died of overwork, from the toil of years that taxed his
strength. None but those who have been behind the scenes can appreciate
the energies that are required in making up a great daily newspaper. Its
demands for "copy" come with such regularity. Newspaper writers must
produce just so much, whether they feel like it or not. There is no
newspaper vacation. So the commanders-in-chief of the great dailies
often die of overwork. Henry J. Raymond died that way, Samuel Bowles,
Horace Greeley. Once in a while there are surviving veterans like
Thurlow Weed, or Erastus Brooks, or James Watson Webb--but they shifted
the most of the burden on others as they grew old. Success in any
calling means drudgery, sacrifice, push, and tug, but especially so in
the ranks of the newspaper armies.
A great many of us, however, about this time, survived a worse fate,
though how we did it is still a mystery of the period. We discovered, in
the spring of 1884, that we had been eating and drinking things not to
be mentioned. Honest old-fashioned butter had melted and run out of the
world. Instead of it we had trichinosis in all styles served up morning
and evening--all the evils of the food creation set before us in raw
shape, or done up in puddings, pies, and gravies. The average hotel hash
was innocent merriment compared to our adulterated butter. The candies,
which we bought for our children, under chemical analysis, were found to
be crystallised disease. Lozenges were of red lead. Coffees and teas
were so adulterated that we felt like Charles Lamb, who, in a similar
predicament, said, "If this be coffee, give me tea; and if it be tea,
give me coffee." Even our medicines were so craftily adulterated that
they were sure to kill. There was alum in our bread, chalk in our milk,
glass in our sugar, Venetian red in our cocoa, and heaven knows what in
the syrup.
Too much politics in our food threatened to demoralise our large cities.
The same thing had happened in London, in 1868. We survived it, kept on
preaching against it, and giving money to prosecute the guilty. It was
an age of pursuit; ministers pursuing ministers, lawyers pursuing
lawyers, doctors, merchants, even Arctic explorers pursuing one another,
the North Pole a jealous centre of interest. Everything is frozen in the
Arctic region save the jealousies of the Arctic explorers. Even the
North Pole men were like others. This we discovered in 1884, when, in
Washington, the post-mortem trial of DeLong and his men was in progress.
There was nothing to be gained by the controversy. There were no laurels
to be awarded by this investigation, because the men whose fame was most
involved were dead. It was a quarrel, and the "Jeannette" was the
graveyard in which it took place. It was disgraceful.
Jealousy is the rage of a man, also of a woman.
It was evident, in the progress of this one-sided trial, that our
legislature needed to have their corridors, their stairways, and their
rooms cleaned of lobbyists.
At the State Capital in Albany, one bright spring morning in the same
year, the legislature rose and shook itself, and the Sergeant-at-Arms
was instructed to drive the squad of lobbyists out of the building. He
did it so well that he scarcely gave them time to get their canes or
their hats. Some of the lowest men in New York and Brooklyn were among
them. That was a spring cleaning worth while. But it was only a little
corner of the political arena that was unclean.
I remember how eagerly, when I went to Canada in April, the reporters
kept asking me who would be the next President. It would have been such
an easy thing to answer if I had only known who the man was. In this
dilemma I suggested some of our best presidential timber in Brooklyn as
suitable candidates. These were General Slocum, General Woodford,
General Tracey, Mayor Low, Judge Pratt, Judge Tierney, Mr. Stranahan,
and Judge Neilson. Some of these men had been seriously mentioned for
the office. Honourable mention was all they got, however. They were too
unpretentious for the role. It was the beginning of a mud-slinging
campaign. New York versus New York--Brooklyn versus Brooklyn.
I long ago came to the conclusion that the real heroes of the world were
on the sea. The ambitions of men crowded together on land were
incontestably disgusting. On the vast, restless deep men stand alone, in
brave conflict with constant danger. I was always deeply impressed by
the character of men, as revealed in disasters of the sea. There were
many of them during my life-time. The bigger the ships grew, the more
dangerous became ocean travel. Our improvements seemed to add to the
humour of grim old Neptune. In 1884 the ocean was becoming a great
turnpike road, and people were required by law to keep to the right or
to the left. A population of a million sailors was on the sea at all
times. Some of the ships were too busy to stop to save human lives, as
was the case in the disaster of the "Florida." In distress, her captain
hailed "The City of Rome," a monster of the deep. But "The City of
Rome" had no time to stop, and passed on by. The lifeboats of the
"Florida" were useless shells, utterly unseaworthy. The "Florida" was
unfit for service. John Bayne, the engineer, was the hero who lost his
life to save others. But this was becoming a common story of the sea;
for when the "Schiller" went down, Captain Thomas gave his life for
others. When the "Central-America" sank, President Arthur's
father-in-law perished in the same way. Every shipwreck I have known
seems lighted up with some marvellous deed of heroism in man.
In 1884 there was a failure in Wall Street for eight or ten million
dollars, and hundreds went down during this shipwreck. By heroism and
courage alone were they able to outlive it. To whom did all this money
belong? To those who were drowned in the storm of financial sea. But it
was only a Wall Street flurry; it did not affect the national ship as it
would have done twenty years before. The time had passed when Wall
Street could jeopardise the commerce of the country. Twenty years
before, such a calamity in three days' time would have left all the
business of the nation in the dust. It would have crashed down all the
banks, the insurance companies, the stock-houses. New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans--from coast to coast,
everything would have tumbled down.
The principal lesson derived from this panic was to keep excitable men
out of Wall Street. While the romance of a failure for hundreds of
thousands of dollars is more appealing than a failure for a small sum,
the greater the deficit the greater the responsibility. Ferdinand Ward
was in this Wall Street crash of 1883. The roseate glasses of wealth
through which he saw the world had made him also see millions in every
direction. George L. Seney lost his bank and railroad stock in this
failure, but he had given hundreds of thousands to the cause of
education, North and South. Some people regretted that he had not kept
his fortune to help him out of his trouble. I believe there were
thousands of good people all over the country who prayed that this
philanthropist might be restored to wealth. There was one man in Wall
Street at this time who I said could not fail. He was Mr. A.S. Hatch,
President of the New York Stock Exchange. He had given large sums of
money to Christian work, and was personally an active church member.
That which I hear about men who are unfortunate makes no impression on
me. There is always a great jubilee over the downfall of a financier. I
like to put the best phase possible upon a man's misfortune. No one
begrudged the wealth of the rich men of the past.
The world was becoming too compressed, it was said; there was not room
enough to get away from your troubles. All the better. It was getting to
a compactness that could be easily poked up and divinely appropriated. A
new cable was landed at Rockport, Mass., that was to bring the world
into closer reunion of messages. We were to have cheaper cable service
under the management of the Commercial Cable Company. Simultaneously
with this information, the s.s. "America" made the astounding record of
a trip from shore to shore of the Atlantic, in six days fourteen hours
and eighteen minutes. It was a startling symbol of future wonders. I
promised then to exchange pulpits with any church in England once a
month. It seemed a possibility, as proposed in Mr. Corbin's scheme of
harbours at Montauk Point. There were pauses in the breathless speed we
were just beginning at this time. We paused to say farewell to the good
men whom we were passing by. They were not spectacular. Some of them
will no doubt be unknown to the reader.
A gentle old man, his face illumined always by a radiant smile, fell
behind. He was Bishop Simpson. We paused to bid him farewell. In 1863,
walking the streets of Philadelphia one night with an army surgeon, we
passed the Academy of Music in that city, where a meeting was being held
on behalf of the Christian Commission, the object of which was to take
care of wounded soldiers. As we stood at the back of the stage
listening, the meeting seemed to be very dull. A speaker was introduced.
His voice was thin, his manner unimpressive. My friend said, "Let's go,"
but I replied, "Wait until we see what there is in him." Suddenly, he
grew upon us. The address became adorned with a pathos, a sublimity, and
an enthusiasm that overwhelmed the audience. When the speaker sat down,
I inquired who he was.
"That is Bishop Simpson," said my informant. In later years, I learned
that the Bishop's address that night was the great hour of his life. His
reputation became national. He was one of the few old men who knew how
to treat young men. He used no gestures on the platform, no climaxes, no
dramatic effects of voice, yet he was eloquent beyond description. His
earnestness broke over and broke through all rules of rhetoric. He made
his audiences think and feel as he did himself. That, I believe, is the
best of a man's inner salvation.
In the autumn of the same year we paused to close the chapters of Jerry
McCauley's life, a man who had risen from the depths of crime and
sin--a different sort of man from Bishop Simpson. He was born in the
home of a counterfeiter. He became a thief, an outlaw. By an influence
that many consider obsolete and old-fashioned, he became converted, and
was recognised by the best men and women in New York and Brooklyn. I
knew McCauley. I stood with him on the steps of his mission in Water
Street. He was a river thief changed into an angel. It was supernatural,
a miracle. McCauley gave twelve years to his mission work. Two years
before his death he changed his quarters, converting a dive into a House
of God. What an imbecile city government refused to touch was
surrendered to hosannas and doxologies. The story of Jerry McCauley's
missionary work in the heart of a wicked section of New York was called
romantic. I attest that I am just as keenly sensitive to the beauty of
romance as any human being, but there was a great deal that was called
romantic in American life in 1884-1885 that was not so. Romance became a
roseate mist, through which old and young saw the obligations of life
but dimly.
A strange romance of marriage became epidemic in America at this time.
European ethics were being imported, and the romance of European liberty
swept over us. A parental despotism was responsible. The newspapers of
the summer of 1884 were full of elopements. They were long exciting
chapters of domestic calamity. My sympathies were with the young fellow
of seven hundred dollars income, married to a millionaire fool who
continually informed him how much better her position was before she
left home; the honeymoon a bliss of six months, and all the rest of his
life a profound wish that he had never been born; his only redress the
divorce court or the almshouse. The poetry of these elopements was
false, the prose that came after was the truth. Marriage is an
old-fashioned business, and that wedding procession lasts longest that
starts not down the ladder out of the back window, but from the front
door with a benediction.
But, morally and politically, we were in a riot of opinion against which
I constantly protested. Politically, we were without morals.
The opposing Presidential candidates in 1884 were Grover Cleveland and
James G. Blaine. It was the wonder of the world that the American people
did not make Mr. Blaine President. There was a world-wide amazement also
at the abuse which preceded Mr. Cleveland's election. The whole thing
was a spectacle of the ignorance of men about great men. All sorts of
defamatory reports were spread abroad about them. Men of mind are also
men of temperament. There are two men in every one man, and for this
reason Mr. Blaine was the most misunderstood of great men. To the end of
his brilliant life calumny pursued him. There were all sorts of reports
about him.
One series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was almost unable to walk;
that he was too sick to be seen; that death was for him close at hand,
and his obituaries were in type in many of the printing offices.
The other series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was vigorous; went up
the front steps of his house at a bound; was doing more work than ever,
and was rollicking with mirth. The baleful story was ascribed to his
enemies, who wanted the great man out of the world. The reassuring story
was ascribed to his friends, who wanted to keep him in the ranks of
Presidential possibilities.
The fact is that both reports were true. There were two Mr. Blaines, as
there are two of every mercurial temperament. Of the phlegmatic,
slow-pulsed man there is only one. You see him once and you see him as
he always is. Not so with the nervous organisation. He has as many moods
as the weather, as many changes as the sky. He is bright or dull, serene
or tempestuous, cold or hot, up or down, January or August, day or
night, Arctic or tropical. At Washington, in 1889, I saw the two Blaines
within two hours. I called with my son to see the great Secretary of
State at his office, and although it was his day for seeing foreign
diplomats, he received us with great cordiality. His face was an
illumination; his voice resonant; his manner animated; he was full of
gesticulation. He walked up and down the room describing things under
discussion; fire in his eye, spring in his step. Although about
fifty-nine years of age, he looked forty-five, and strong enough to
wrestle with two or three ordinary men. He had enough vitality for an
athlete.
We parted. My son and I went down the street, made two or three other
calls, and on the way noticed a carriage passing with two or three
people in it. My attention was startled by the appearance in that
carriage of what seemed a case of extreme invalidism. The man seemed
somewhat bolstered up. My sympathies were immediately aroused, and I
said to my son, "Look at that sick man riding yonder." When the carriage
came nearer to us, my son said, "That is Mr. Blaine." Looking closely at
the carriage I found that this was so. He had in two hours swung from
vigour to exhaustion, from the look of a man good for twenty years of
successful work to a man who seemed to be taking his last ride. He
simply looked as he felt on both occasions. We had seen the two Blaines.
How much more just we would be in our judgment of men if we realised
that a man may be honestly two different men, and how this theory would
explain that which in every man of high organisation seems sometimes to
be contradictory! Aye, within five minutes some of us with mercurial
natures can remember to have been two entirely different men in two
entirely different worlds. Something said to us cheering or depressing;
some tidings announced, glad or sad; some great kindness done for us, or
some meanness practised on us have changed the zone, the pulsation, the
physiognomy, the physical, the mental, the spiritual condition, and we
become no more what we were than summer is winter, or midnoon is
midnight, or frosts are flowers.
The air was full of political clamour and strife in the election of
1884. Never in this country was there a greater temptation to political
fraud, because, after four month's battle, the counting of the ballots
revealed almost a tie. I urged self-control among men who were angry and
men who were bitter. The enemies of Mr. Blaine were not necessarily the
friends of Mr. Cleveland. The enemies of Mr. Cleveland were bitter, but
they were afraid of Mr. Blaine; for he was a giant intellectually,
practically, physically, and he stood in the centre of a national arena
of politics, prepared to meet all challenge. Mr. Cleveland never really
opposed him. He faced him on party issues, not as an individual
antagonist. The excitement was intense during the suspense that followed
the counting of the ballots, and Mr. Cleveland went into the White House
amidst a roar of public opinion so confused and so vicious that there
was no certainty of ultimate order in the country. In after years I
enjoyed his confidence and friendship, and I learned to appreciate the
stability and reserve of his nature. In a Milestone beyond this, I have
recalled a conversation I had with him at the White House, and recorded
my impressions of him. Above the clamour of these troublesome times, I
raised my voice and said that in the distant years to come the electors
of New York, Alabama, and Maine, and California, would march together
down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington for the discharge of the great
duties of the Electoral College.
The storm passed, and the Democrats were in power. It was the calm that
follows an electrical disturbance. The paroxysm of filth and moral death
was over.
Mr. Vanderbilt, converted into a philanthropist, gave five hundred
thousand dollars to a medical institute, and the world began to see new
possibilities in great fortunes. That a railroad king could also be a
Christian king was a hopeful tendency of the times. These were the acts
that tended to smother the activities of Communism in America.
In the previous four years the curious astronomer had discovered the
evolution of a new world in the sky, and so while on earth there were
convulsions, in the skies there were new beauties born. With the rising
sun of the year 1885, one of our great and good men of Brooklyn saw it
with failing eyesight. Doctor Noah Hunt Schenck, pastor of St. Ann's
Episcopal Church, was stricken. For fifteen years he had blessed our
city with his benediction. The beautiful cathedral which grew to its
proportions of grandeur under Doctor Schenck's pastorate, stood as a
monument to him.
A few weeks later Schuyler Colfax, speaker of the House of
Representatives, passed on. In the vortex of political feeling his
integrity was attacked but I never believed a word of the accusations.
Ten millions of people hoped for his election as President. He was my
personal friend. When the scandal of his life was most violent, he
explained it all away satisfactorily in my own house. This explanation
was a confidence that I cannot break, but it made me ever afterwards a
loyal friend to his memory. He was one of those upon whom was placed the
burden of living down a calumny, and when he died Congress adjourned in
his honour. Members of the legislature in his own country gathered about
his obsequies. I have known many men in public life, but a more lovable
man than Schuyler Colfax I never knew. The generous words he spoke of me
on the last Sabbath of his life I shall never forget. The perpetual
smile on his face was meanly caricatured, and yet it was his benediction
upon a world unworthy of him.
In 1885, from far away over the sea came muffled thunder tones of war
and rebellion. The deadly nightshade was indigenous to our times. The
dynamite outrages at Westminster Hall and the House of Commons were
explosions we in America heard faintly. Their importance was
exaggerated. A hundred years back, the kings of England, of France, of
Russia who died in their beds were rare. The violent incidents of life
were less conspicuous as the years went on. What riots Philadelphia had
seen during the old firemen's battle in the streets! And those
theatrical riots in New York, when the military was called out, and had
to fire into the mob, because the friends of Macready and Forrest could
not agree as to which was the better actor!
An alarming number of disputes came up at this time over wills. The
Orphan Courts were over-worked with these cases. I suggested a rule for
all wills: one-third at least to the wife, and let the children share
alike. When a child receives more than a wife, the family is askew. A
man's wife should be first in every ambition, in every provision.
One-third to the wife is none too much. The worst family feuds proceed
from inequality of inheritance.
This question of rights under testamentary gifts of the rich was not so
important, however, as the alarming growth in our big cities of the
problem of the poor. The tenement house became a menace to cleanliness.
Never before were there so many people living in unswept, unaired
tenements. Stairs below stairs, stairs above stairs, where all the laws
of health were violated. The Sanitary Protective League was organised to
alleviate these conditions. Asiatic cholera was striding over Europe,
and the tenement house of America was a resting place for it here.
After a lecturing trip in the spring of 1885 through Ohio, Indiana,
Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, I returned to Brooklyn, delighted
with the confidence with which the people looked forward to the first
Cleveland administration. On the day that $50,000,000 was voted for the
River and Harbour Bill, both parties sharing in the spoils, American
politics touched bottom. There were symptoms of recuperation in Mr.
Cleveland's initiative. Belligerency was abandoned as a hopeless
campaign.
The graceful courtesy with which President Arthur bowed himself out of
the White House was unparalleled. Never in my memory was a sceptre so
gracefully relinquished. Nothing in his three-and-a-half years of office
did him more credit. I think we never had a better President than Mr.
Arthur. He was fortunate in having in his Cabinet as chief adviser Mr.
Frederick T. Frelinghuysen.
My office as a minister compelled me to see, first and foremost, the
righteous uplift of the events as I passed along with them. These were
not always the most conspicuous elements of public interest, but they
comprised the things and the people I saw.
I recall, for instance, chief amongst the incidents of Mr. Cleveland's
administration, that the oath of office was administered upon his
mother's Bible. Many people regarded this as mere sentimentality. To me
it meant more than words could express. The best of Bibles is the
mother's. It meant that the man who chose to be sworn in on such a book
had a grateful remembrance. It was as though he had said, "If it had not
been for her, this honour would never have come to me." For all there is
of actual solemnity in the usual form of taking an oath, people might
just as well be sworn in on a city directory or an old almanac. But, as
I said then, I say now--make way for an administration that starts from
the worn and faded covers of a Bible presented by a mother's hand at
parting.
Mr. Blaine's visit to the White House to congratulate the victor, his
cordial reception there, and his long stay, was another bright side of
the election contest. There must have been a good deal of lying about
these two men when they were wrestling for the honours, for if all that
was said had been true the scene of hearty salutation between them would
not only have been unfit, but impossible.
All this optimism of outlook helped to defeat the animosity of the
previous campaign. A crowning influence upon the national confusion of
standards was the final unanimous vote in Congress in favour of putting
General Grant on the retired list, with a suitable provision for his
livelihood, in view of a malady that had come upon him. It had been a
long, angry, bitter debate, but the generous quality of American
sympathy prevailed. Men who fought on the other side and men who had
opposed his Presidential policy united to alleviate his sickness, the
pulsations of which the nation was counting. President Arthur's last act
was to recommend General Grant's relief, and almost the first act of Mr.
Cleveland's administration was to ratify it. Republics are not
ungrateful. The American Republic subscribed about $400,000 for the
relief of Mrs. Garfield; voted pensions for Mrs. Polk and Mrs. Tyler;
some years ago subscribed $250,000 for General Grant, and increased it
by vote of Congress in 1885. The Conqueror on the pale horse had already
taken many prisoners among the surviving heroes of the war. It was
fitting that he should make his coming upon the great leader of the
Union Army as gentle as the south wind.
There was a surplus of men fit for official position in America when the
hour of our new appointments arrived. There were hundreds of men
competent to become ministers to England, to France, to Germany, to
Russia; as competent as James Russell Lowell or Mr. Phelps. This was all
due to the affluence of American institutions, that spread the benefits
of education broadcast. I remember when Daniel Webster died, people
said, "We shall have no one now to expound the constitution," but the
chief expositions of the constitution have been written and uttered
since then. There were pigmies in the old days, too. I had a friend who,
as a stenographer some years ago, made a fortune by knocking bad grammar
out of the speeches of Congressmen and Senators, who were illiterate.
They said to him haughtily, "Stenographer, here are a couple of hundred
dollars; fix up that speech I made this morning, and see that it gets
into the Congressional Record all right. If you can't fix it up, write
another."
In 1885, there were plenty of women, too, who understood politics. There
were mean and silly women, of course, but there was a new race springing
up of grand, splendid, competent women, with a knowledge of affairs. The
appointment of Mr. Cox as Minister to Turkey was a compliment to
American literature. In consequence of a picturesque description he gave
of some closing day in a foreign country, he was facetiously nicknamed
"Sunset Cox." I rechristened him "Sunrise Cox." When President Tyler
appointed Washington Irving as Minister to Spain, he set an example for
all time. Men of letters put their blood into their inkstands, but the
sacrifice is poorly recognised.
Some of us were faintly urging world-wide peace, but around the night
sky of 1885 was the glare of many camp fires. Never were there so many
wars on the calendar at the same time. The Soudan war, the threat of a
Russo-English war and of a Franco-Chinese war, the South-American war,
the Colombian war--all the nations restless and arming. The scarlet rash
of international hatred spread over the earth, and there were many
predictions. I said then it was comparatively easy to foretell the issue
of these wars--excepting one. I believed that the Revolutionist of
Panama would be beaten; the half-breed overcome by the Canadian; that
France would humble China, but that the Central American war would go
on, and stop, and go on again, and stop again, until, discovering some
Washington or Hamilton or Jefferson of its own, it would establish a
United States of South America corresponding with the United States of
North America. The Soudan war would cease when the English Government
abandoned the attempt to fix up in Egypt things unfixable. But what
would be the result of the outbreak between England and Russia was the
war problem of the world. The real question at issue was whether Europe
should be dominated by the lion or the bear.
In the United States we had no internal frictions which threatened us so
much as rum and gambling. In Brooklyn we never ceased bombarding these
rebellious agents of war on the character of young men. Coney Island was
once a beautiful place, but in the five years since that time, when it
was a garden by the sea, the races at Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay
had been established. In New York and Brooklyn pool rooms were open for
betting on these races. In ten years' time I predicted that no decent
man or woman would be able to visit Coney Island. The evil was
stupendous, and the subject of Coney Island could no longer be neglected
in the pulpit.
Betting was a new-fashioned sort of vice in America in 1885; it was just
becoming a licensed relaxation for young boys. As the years went on, it
has grown to great distinction in all forms of American life, but it was
yet only at its starting point in this year. Looking over an address I
made on this subject, I find this statement:
"What a spectacle when, at Saratoga, or at Long Branch, or at Brighton
Beach, the horses stop, and in a flash $50,000 or $100,000 change
hands--multitudes ruined by losses, others, ruined by winnings." Many
years afterwards the money involved in racing was in the millions; but
in 1885, $100,000 was still a good bit. There were three kinds of
betting at the horse races then--by auction pools, by French mutuals,
and by what is called bookmaking--all of these methods controlled "for a
consideration." The pool seller deducted three or five per cent. from
the winning bet (incidentally "ringing up" more tickets than were sold
on the winning horse), while the bookmaker, for special inducement,
would scratch any horse in the race. The jockey also, for a
consideration, would slacken speed to allow a prearranged winner to walk
in, while the judges on the stand turned their backs.
It was just a swindling trust. And yet, these race tracks on a fine
afternoon were crowded with intelligent men of good standing in the
community, and frequently the parasols of the ladies gave colour and
brilliancy to the scene. Our most beautiful watering places were all but
destroyed by the race tracks. To stop all this was like turning back the
ocean tides, so regular became the habit of gambling, of betting, of
being legally swindled in America. No one was interested in the evils of
life. We were on the frontier of a greater America, a greater waste of
money, a greater paradise of pleasure.
Some notice was taken of General Grant's malady, mysteriously pronounced
incurable. The bulletins informed us that his life might last a week, a
day, an hour--and still the famous old warrior kept getting better. One
moment Grant was dying, the next he was dining heartily at his own
dinner table. This was one of the mysteries of the period. Personally, I
believe the prayers of the Church kept him alive.
In April, 1885, the huge pedestal for the wonderful statue of Liberty,
presented to us by the citizens of France, was started. That which
Congress had ignored, and the philanthropists of America had neglected,
the masses were doing by their modest subscription--a dollar from the
men, ten cents from the children. All Europe wrapped in war cloud made
the magnificence and splendour of our enlightened liberty greater than
ever. It was time that the gates of the sea, the front door of America,
should be made more attractive. Castle Garden was a gloomy corridor
through which to arrive. I urged that the harbour fortresses should be
terraced with flowers, fitting the approach to the forehead of this
continent that Bartholdi was to illumine with his Coronet of Flame.
The Bartholdi statue, as we read and heard, and talked about it, became
an inspired impulse to fine art in America. In the right hand of the
statue was to be a torch; in the left hand, a scroll representing the
law. What a fine conception of true liberty! It was my hope then that
fifty years after the statue had been placed on its pedestal the foreign
ships passing Bedloe's Island, by that allegory, should ever understand
that in this country it is liberty according to law. Life, as we should
live it, is strong, according to our obedience of its statutes.
In my boyhood this was impressed upon me by association and example.
When in May, 1885, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, ex-Secretary of State,
died, I was forcibly reminded of this fact. I grew up in a neighbourhood
where the name of Frelinghuysen was a synonym for purity of character
and integrity. There were Dominie Frelinghuysen, General John
Frelinghuysen, Senator Theodore Frelinghuysen--and Frederick
Frelinghuysen, the father of "Fred," as he was always called in his home
state. When I was a boy, "Fred" Frelinghuysen practised in the old
Somerville Courthouse in New Jersey, and I used to crowd in and listen
to his eloquence, and wonder how he could have composure enough to face
so many people. He was the king of the New Jersey bar. Never once in his
whole lifetime was his name associated with a moral disaster of any
kind. Amid the pomp and temptations of Washington he remained a
consistent Christian. All the Feloniousness were alike--grandfather,
grandson, and uncle. On one side of the sea was the Prime Minister of
England, Gladstone; on the other side was Secretary of State
Frelinghuysen; two men whom I associate in mutual friendship and
esteem.
Towards the end of June, 1885, we were tremendously excited. All one day
long the cheek of New York was flushed with excitement over the arrival
of the Bartholdi statue. Bunting and banners canopied the harbour,
fluttered up and down the streets, while minute guns boomed, and bands
of music paraded. We had miraculously escaped the national disgrace of
not having a place to put it on when it arrived. It was a gift that
meant European and American fraternity. The $100,000 contributed by the
masses for the pedestal on Bedloe's Island was an estimate of American
gratitude and courtesy to France. The statue itself would stand for ages
as the high-water mark of civilisation. From its top we expected to see
the bright tinge of the dawn of universal peace.