a man's station may be, if he does his full duty in that place he is
just as much entitled to the American people's honor as is the king upon
his throne. But we do not so teach. We are now teaching everywhere that
the generals do all the fighting.
I remember that, after the war, I went down to see General Robert E.
Lee, that magnificent Christian gentleman of whom both North and South
are now proud as one of our great Americans. The general told me about
his servant, "Rastus," who was an enlisted colored soldier. He called
him in one day to make fun of him, and said, "Rastus, I hear that all
the rest of your company are killed, and why are you not killed?" Rastus
winked at him and said, "'Cause when there is any fightin' goin' on I
stay back with the generals."
I remember another illustration. I would leave it out but for the fact
that when you go to the library to read this lecture, you will find this
has been printed in it for twenty-five years. I shut my eyes--shut them
close--and lo! I see the faces of my youth. Yes, they sometimes say to
me, "Your hair is not white; you are working night and day without
seeming ever to stop; you can't be old." But when I shut my eyes, like
any other man of my years, oh, then come trooping back the faces of the
loved and lost of long ago, and I know, whatever men may say, it is
evening-time.
I shut my eyes now and look back to my native town in Massachusetts, and
I see the cattle-show ground on the mountain-top; I can see the
horse-sheds there. I can see the Congregational church; see the town
hall and mountaineers' cottages; see a great assembly of people turning
out, dressed resplendently, and I can see flags flying and handkerchiefs
waving and hear bands playing. I can see that company of soldiers that
had re-enlisted marching up on that cattle-show ground. I was but a boy,
but I was captain of that company and puffed out with pride. A cambric
needle would have burst me all to pieces. Then I thought it was the
greatest event that ever came to man on earth. If you have ever thought
you would like to be a king or queen, you go and be received by the
mayor.
The bands played, and all the people turned out to receive us. I marched
up that Common so proud at the head of my troops, and we turned down
into the town hall. Then they seated my soldiers down the center aisle
and I sat down on the front seat. A great assembly of people--a hundred
or two--came in to fill the town hall, so that they stood up all around.
Then the town officers came in and formed a half-circle. The mayor of
the town sat in the middle of the platform. He was a man who had never
held office before; but he was a good man, and his friends have told me
that I might use this without giving them offense. He was a good man,
but he thought an office made a man great. He came up and took his seat,
adjusted his powerful spectacles, and looked around, when he suddenly
spied me sitting there on the front seat. He came right forward on the
platform and invited me up to sit with the town officers. No town
officer ever took any notice of me before I went to war, except to
advise the teacher to thrash me, and now I was invited up on the stand
with the town officers. Oh my! the town mayor was then the emperor, the
king of our day and our time. As I came up on the platform they gave me
a chair about this far, I would say, from the front.
When I had got seated, the chairman of the Selectmen arose and came
forward to the table, and we all supposed he would introduce the
Congregational minister, who was the only orator in town, and that he
would give the oration to the returning soldiers. But, friends, you
should have seen the surprise which ran over the audience when they
discovered that the old fellow was going to deliver that speech himself.
He had never made a speech in his life, but he fell into the same error
that hundreds of other men have fallen into. It seems so strange that a
man won't learn he must speak his piece as a boy if he intends to be an
orator when he is grown, but he seems to think all he has to do is to
hold an office to be a great orator.
So he came up to the front, and brought with him a speech which he had
learned by heart walking up and down the pasture, where he had
frightened the cattle. He brought the manuscript with him and spread it
out on the table so as to be sure he might see it. He adjusted his
spectacles and leaned over it for a moment and marched back on that
platform, and then came forward like this--tramp, tramp, tramp. He must
have studied the subject a great deal, when you come to think of it,
because he assumed an "elocutionary" attitude. He rested heavily upon
his left heel, threw back his shoulders, slightly advanced the right
foot, opened the organs of speech, and advanced his right foot at an
angle of forty-five. As he stood in that elocutionary attitude, friends,
this is just the way that speech went. Some people say to me, "Don't you
exaggerate?" That would be impossible. But I am here for the lesson and
not for the story, and this is the way it went:
"Fellow-citizens--" As soon as he heard his voice his fingers began to
go like that, his knees began to shake, and then he trembled all over.
He choked and swallowed and came around to the table to look at the
manuscript. Then he gathered himself up with clenched fists and came
back: "Fellow-citizens, we are--Fellow-citizens, we are--we are--we
are--we are--we are--we are very happy--we are very happy--we are very
happy. We are very happy to welcome back to their native town these
soldiers who have fought and bled--and come back again to their native
town. We are especially--we are especially--we are especially. We are
especially pleased to see with us to-day this young hero" (that meant
me)--"this young hero who in imagination" (friends, remember he said
that; if he had not said "in imagination" I would not be egotistic
enough to refer to it at all)--"this young hero who in imagination we
have seen leading--we have seen leading--leading. We have seen leading
his troops on to the deadly breach. We have seen his shining--we have
seen his shining--his shining--his shining sword--flashing. Flashing in
the sunlight, as he shouted to his troops, 'Come on'!"
Oh dear, dear, dear! how little that good man knew about war. If he had
known anything about war at all he ought to have known what any of my G.
A. R. comrades here to-night will tell you is true, that it is next to a
crime for an officer of infantry ever in time of danger to go ahead of
his men. "I, with my shining sword flashing in the sunlight, shouting to
my troops, 'Come on'!" I never did it. Do you suppose I would get in
front of my men to be shot in front by the enemy and in the back by my
own men? That is no place for an officer. The place for the officer in
actual battle is behind the line. How often, as a staff officer, I rode
down the line, when our men were suddenly called to the line of battle,
and the Rebel yells were coming out of the woods, and shouted: "Officers
to the rear! Officers to the rear!" Then every officer gets behind the
line of private soldiers, and the higher the officer's rank the farther
behind he goes. Not because he is any the less brave, but because the
laws of war require that. And yet he shouted, "I, with my shining
sword--" In that house there sat the company of my soldiers who had
carried that boy across the Carolina rivers that he might not wet his
feet. Some of them had gone far out to get a pig or a chicken. Some of
them had gone to death under the shell-swept pines in the mountains of
Tennessee, yet in the good man's speech they were scarcely known. He did
refer to them, but only incidentally. The hero of the hour was this boy.
Did the nation owe him anything? No, nothing then and nothing now. Why
was he the hero? Simply because that man fell into that same human
error--that this boy was great because he was an officer and these were
only private soldiers.
Oh, I learned the lesson then that I will never forget so long as the
tongue of the bell of time continues to swing for me. Greatness consists
not in the holding of some future office, but really consists in doing
great deeds with little means and the accomplishment of vast purposes
from the private ranks of life. To be great at all one must be great
here, now, in Philadelphia. He who can give to this city better streets
and better sidewalks, better schools and more colleges, more happiness
and more civilization, more of God, he will be great anywhere. Let every
man or woman here, if you never hear me again, remember this, that if
you wish to be great at all, you must begin where you are and what you
are, in Philadelphia, now. He that can give to his city any blessing, he
who can be a good citizen while he lives here, he that can make better
homes, he that can be a blessing whether he works in the shop or sits
behind the counter or keeps house, whatever be his life, he who would be
great anywhere must first be great in his own Philadelphia.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Note:
The following paragraph appears at the bottom of page 3 in the original:
This is the most recent and complete form of the lecture.
It happened to be delivered in Philadelphia, Dr. Conwell's
home city. When he says "right here in Philadelphia," he means
the home city, town, or village of every reader of this book, just
as he would use the name of it if delivering the lecture there,
instead of doing it through the pages which follow.