All sorts and conditions of men and women elbowed and crowded each other
under the dim gaslight at the three entrances to the Boston Music Hall.
The snow was thick on the ground outside, and it had been thawing all the
afternoon. The great booby sleighs slid and slipped and rocked through the
wet stuff, the policemen vociferated, the horse-car drivers on Tremont
Street rang their bells furiously, and a great crowd of pedestrians
stumbled and tumbled about in the mud and slush and snow of the crossings,
all bent on getting inside the Music Hall in time for the beginning of the
lecture.
The affair was called a "lecture" in accordance with the time-honored
custom of Boston, and unless it were termed an oration, it would be hard
to find a better name for it. A "meeting" implies a number of orators, or
at least a well-filled row of chairs upon the platform. A "lecture," on
the other hand, does not convey to the ordinary mind the idea of a
political speech, and critical persons with a taste for etymology say that
the word means something which is read.
John Harrington had determined to speak in public on certain subjects
connected with modern politics, and had caused the fact to be extensively
made known. His name alone would have sufficed to draw a large audience,
but the great attention he had attracted by his doings for some time past,
and the severe criticisms lately made upon him by the local press,
rendered the interest even greater than it would otherwise have been.
Moreover, the lecture was free. Harrington was a poor man, as fortunes go
in Boston, but it was his chiefest principle that a man had no right to be
paid for speaking the truth, even though it might sometimes be just that
people should pay something for hearing it. Accordingly the lecture was
free, and at the appointed hour the house was full to overflowing.
In the front row of the first gallery sat old Miss Schenectady, and by her
side was Josephine Thorn. A little colony of "Beacon Street" had collected
there, and Pocock Vancouver was not far off. It is not often that Beacon
Street goes to such lectures, but John was one of themselves, and had too
many friends and enemies among them not to be certain of a large
attendance.
Miss Schenectady was there, partly because she believed in John
Harrington, and partly because Joe insisted upon going; and, generally
speaking, what Joe insisted upon was done. The old lady did not understand
why her niece was so very anxious to be present, but as the proposition
fell in with her own desires, she made no objection. The fact was that
Joe's interest in John had very greatly increased of late, and her
curiosity to hear the man she met so often speak to a great audience was
excited to its highest pitch. She fancied, too, from many things she had
heard said, that a large proportion of his audience would be hostile to
him, and that she would see him roused to his greatest strength and
eloquence. She did not consider her impulse in the least, for though she
felt a stronger interest in Harrington than she had ever before felt in
any individual, it had not struck her that she was beginning to care
overmuch for the sight of his face and the sound of his voice. She could
not have believed she was beginning to love him; and if any secret voice
had suggested to her conscience that it was so, she could have silenced it
at once to her own satisfaction by merely remembering the coldness with
which she generally treated him. She had got into the habit of treating
him in that way from the first, when she had been prejudiced against him
and the annoyance she often felt at his indifference made her think that
she ought to be consistent and never allow her formal manner to change.
Unfortunately she now and then forgot herself, as she had done after the
little skirmish with Vancouver at Mrs. Wyndham's, and then she talked to
him and asked him questions of himself almost as though he were an
intimate friend.
John, who was a man of the world as well as a man of talent, thought she
was capricious, and since he was infinitely removed from falling in love
with her, or indeed with any other woman, he found it agreeable to talk to
her when she was in a good humor, and when she was ungracious he merely
kept out of her way. If he had deliberately made up his mind to attract
her attention and interest, he could have chosen no surer way than this.
But although he admired her beauty and vivacity, and now and then took a
real pleasure in her conversation, his mind was too full of other matters
to receive any lasting impression of such a kind. Besides, she was
capricious, and he hated mere caprice.
And now there was a hush in the house, and then a short burst of applause,
and Josephine, looking down, saw John standing alone upon the platform in
front of the great bronze statue of Beethoven. He looked exactly as he did
when she met him in society; there was no change in the even color of his
face, nor any awkwardness or self-consciousness in his easy attitude as he
stood there, broad-shouldered and square, his strong hand just resting on
the plain desk that had been placed in the middle of the stage. He waited
a few seconds for silence in the audience, and then began to speak. His
voice sounded as natural and his accent as unaffected as though he were
talking alone with a friend, saving only that every syllable he uttered
was audible in the furthest gallery. Josephine leaned forward upon the red
leather cushion of the railing before her, watching and listening
intently.
She did not understand the subject well. John Harrington was a reformer,
she knew; or, to speak more accurately, he desired to be one. He believed
great changes were necessary. He believed in an established Civil Service,
in something which, if not exactly Free Trade, was much nearer to it than
the existing tariff. Above all, he believed in truth and freedom instead
of lying and bribery. As he spoke and cleared the way to his main points,
his voice never quavered or faltered. He was perfectly sure of himself,
and he reserved all his strength for the time when it should be most
required. For a quarter of an hour he proceeded, and the people sat in
dead silence before him. Then he paused a moment, and shifted his position
a little, moving a step forward as though to gain a better hearing.
"I am coming to the point," he said,--"the point that I must come to
sooner or later. I am a Democrat, as perhaps some of you know."
Here there was an uneasy movement in the house. "Yes, I guess you are!"
cried a voice from somewhere, in a tone of high nasal irony. Some one
laughed, and some one hissed, and then there was silence again.
"Exactly," continued John, unmoved by the interruption. "I am a Democrat,
and though the sight does not astonish you so much as it might have done
twenty years ago, it is worthy of remark, nevertheless. But I have a
peculiarity which I think you will allow to be extremely novel.
I do not begin by saying that salvation is only to be found with
Democrats, and I will not believe any man who says it belongs exclusively
to Republicans. If we were suddenly put in great danger of any kind, war,
famine, or revolution, I think that in some way or other we should manage
to save the country between us, Republicans and Democrats, for the common
good."
"That's so!" said more than one voice.
"Of course we should. Is there any one among us all who would not give up
his individual views about a local election rather than see the country go
to pieces? Would any man be such a coward as to be afraid to change his
mind in order to prevent another Rebellion, another Civil War? No, no, we
are more civilized than that. We want our own men in Congress, our own
friends in office, just so long as they are serviceable--just so long as
the country can stand it, if you like it in that way. But if it comes to
be a question between the public good and having your cousin made
postmaster in a country village, I think there is enough patriotism in the
average Democrat or Republican to send the country cousin about his
business. If worst comes to worst, we can save the country between us,
depend upon it. We have done it before."
Here there was a burst of willing applause. It is a great point to bring
an audience into the position of applauding themselves.
Joe watched John's every gesture, and listened intently to every word. His
voice rang clear and strong through the great hall, and he was beginning
to be roused. He had gained a decided advantage in the success of his last
words, and as he gathered his strength for the real effort which was to
come, his cheek paled and his gray eyes grew brighter. He spoke out again
through the subsiding clamor.
"Now I say that the country is in danger. It is in very great danger, the
greatest danger that can threaten any community. The institutions of a
nation are like the habits of a man, except that they are harder to
improve and easier to spoil. We have got into bad habits, and if we do not
mend them they will take us to a more certain destruction than revolution,
famine, or war,--or all three together. It is easier to fight a thing that
has a head to it and a name, than a thing that is everywhere and has no
name, because no one has the courage to christen it.
"We are like a man who has grown from being a peddler of tape and buttons
to be the greatest dry-goods-man in his town, and then to being a great
dealer for many towns. When he was a peddler he could carry the profit and
loss on his buttons and tape in his head, because the profits were
literally in his pocket, and the losses were literally out of it. But when
he has grown into a great merchant he must keep books, and he must keep a
great many of them, and they must be kept accurately, or he will get into
trouble and go to ruin. That is true, is it not? And when he was a peddler
he could buy his stock-in-trade himself, and be sure that it was what he
wanted; but when he is one of the great merchants he must employ other
people to help him, and unless they are the right people and understand
the business, he will be ruined. Nobody can deny that.
"Very well. We began in a small way as a nation, without much stock-in-trade, and we kept our accounts by rule of thumb. But it seems to me we
are doing a pretty large business as a nation just now."
There was a laugh, and sundry remarks to the effect that the audience
understood what John was driving at.
"Yes, we are doing a great business, and to all intents and purposes we
are doing it on false business principles, and with an absolutely
incompetent staff of clerks. What would you think of a merchant who
dismissed all his book-keepers every four years, and engaged a set of
shoemakers, or tailors, or artists, or musicians to fill up the
vacancies?"
A low murmur ran through the hall, a murmur of disapprobation. Probably a
large number out of the three thousand men and women present had cousins
in country post offices. But John did not pause; his voice grew full and
clear, ringing high above the dull sounds in the house. From her place in
the gallery Josephine looked down, never taking her eyes from the face of
the orator. She too was pale with excitement; had she been willing to
acknowledge it, it was fear. That deep-toned beginning of a protest from
the great concourse was like an omen of failure to her sensitive ear. She
longed to see John Harrington succeed and carry his hearers with him into
an access of enthusiasm. John expected no such thing. He only wanted the
people to understand thoroughly what he meant, for he was sure that if
once they knew the truth clearly they would feel for it as he himself did.
"Nevertheless," he continued, "I tell you that is what we are doing, what
we have been doing for years, from the very beginning. And if we go on
doing it we shall get into trouble. We choose schoolboys to do the work of
men, we expect that by the mere signature of the head of the executive any
man can be turned into an accomplished public officer fit to be compared
with one whose whole life has been spent in the public service. We wish to
be represented abroad among foreign nations in a way becoming to our
dignity and very great power, and we select as our ministers a number of
gentlemen who in most cases have never read a diplomatic dispatch in their
lives, and who sometimes are not even acquainted with any language save
their own. Perhaps you will say that our dignity is not of much importance
provided our power is great enough. I do not think you will say it, but
there are communities in our country where it would most certainly be
said. Very well, so be it. But where do you think our power comes from? Do
you think there is a boundless store of some natural product called power,
of which we need only take as much as we want in order to stand a head and
shoulders higher than any other nation in the world? What is power? Can a
man be strong if he has an internal disease, or is his strength any use to
him if his arms and legs are out of joint? Would you believe in the
strength of a great firm that hired a company of actors from a theatre,
and made the tragedian cashier and the low-comedy man head book-keeper?
"The sick man may live for years with his sickness, and the man whose
limbs are all distorted may still deal a formidable blow with his head, if
it is thick enough. The firm may prosper for a time with its staff of
theatrical clerks, provided there is enough business to pay for all their
mistakes and leave a margin of profit. But the sick man does not live
because he is diseased, but in spite of it. The distorted joints of the
cripple do not help him to fight. The firm is not rich because its
business is done by tragedians and walking-gentlemen, but in spite of
them. If the doctor fails to give his medicine, if the fighting grows too
rough for the cripple, if business grows slack, or if some good business
man with competent assistants starts a strong opposition--what happens?
What must inevitably happen? Why, the sick man dies, the cripple gets the
worst of it, and the theatrical firm of merchants goes straight into
bankruptcy.
"And so I tell you that we are in danger. We are sick with the foul
disease of office seeking; we are crippled hand and foot not only for
fighting but for working, because our public officers are inexperienced
men who spend four years in learning a trade not theirs, and are very
generally turned out before they have half learnt it; we are doing a
political business which will succeed fairly well just so long as we are
rich enough to provide funds for any amount of extravagance and keep
enough in our pockets to buy bread and cheese with afterwards. Just so
long.
"When we have been lanced here in Boston and the blood is running freely,
we can still cut a slice out of the West and use it like court-plaster to
stop the bleeding. Some day there will be no more slices to be had. It
will be a bad day in State Street."
This remark raised a laugh and a good deal of noise for a moment. But the
audience were soon silent again. Whether they meant to approve or
disapprove, they kept their opinions to themselves. Miss Thorn did not
comprehend the allusion, but she was listening with all her ears.
"You understand that," John went on. "Then understand it about the rest of
the country as well. Understand that we are all the time patching our
income with our capital; and it answers pretty well because there is a
good deal of capital and not so very many of ourselves, as yet. There will
be twice as many of us in a few years, and very much less than half as
much capital. Understand above all that we are getting into bad habits--habits we should despise in a corporation, and condemn by very bad names
in any individual man of our acquaintance.
"And when you have understood it, look at matters as they stand. Look at
the incompetence of our public officers, look at our ruined carrying
trade, at those vile enactions of fools, and worse than fools, the
Navigation Laws of the United States, and tell me whether things are as
they should be. Tell me what has become of liberty if you cannot buy a
ship where you can get her best and cheapest, and hoist your own flag upon
her, and call her your own? You may pay for her and bring her home with
you, but though she were ten times paid for, you cannot hoist the American
flag, nor register her in your own port, nor claim the protection of your
country for your own property--because, forsooth, the ship was not built
on American stocks, where she would cost three times her value, and put a
job into the hands of a set of builders of river steamboats and harbor
mudscows."
Loud murmurs ran through the audience, and cries of "That's so!" and
counter cries of "Freetrader!" were heard on all sides. John's great voice
rang out like a trumpet. He knew the sensitiveness of his townsmen on the
point.
"I am not speaking against protection," he said, and at the magic word
"protection" a dead silence again fell over the vast crowd. "I say to you,
'Protect!' Protect, all of you, merchants, tradesmen, the great body of
the commerce of this country; protect whatever you all decide together
needs protection. But by the greatness and the power you have, by the
Heaven that gave us this land of ours to till and to enjoy, protect also
yourselves and your liberties."
A patriotic phrase in the mouth of a man who has the golden gift of
speech, coupled with the statement of a principle popular with his
audience, is a sure point in an oration. Something in John's tone and
gesture touched the sympathetic chord, and the house broke out in a great
cry of applause.
An orator cannot always talk in strict logical sequence. He must search
about for the right nail till he has found it, and then drive it home.
"Aye, that is the point," he said. "You men of Boston here, look to your
harbors, crowded with English craft, and think of what is gone, lost to
you forever, unless you will strike a blow for it. Many of you are old
enough to remember how it used to be. Look at Salem Harbor, at Marblehead.
Where are the fleets of noble ships that lay side by side along the great
docks, the ships that did half the carrying trade of the world? Where are
the great merchantmen that used to sail so grandly away to the East and
that came home so richly laden? They are sunk or gone to pieces, or sold
as old timber and copper and nails to the gentlemen who build mudscows.
What are the great merchants doing who owned those fleets? They are
employing their time in building railroads with English iron and foreign
labor into desolate deserts in the West, which they hope to sell for a
handsome profit, and probably will. But when there are no more desolate
deserts and English iron and foreign labor to be had, they will wish they
had their ships again, and that in all these years they had got possession
of the carrying trade of the world, as they might have done.
"That is what I am here to say. The time is come to give up the shifts and
unstable expedients that we needed, or thought we needed, in our early
beginnings. Let us pull down all these scaffoldings and stages that have
helped us to build, and let us see whether our fabric will stand upon its
base, erect, without the paltry support of a few rotting timbers. Let us
substitute the permanent for the transitory, the stable for the unstable,
and the reality for the sham. Let us have a Civil Service in fact as well
as in name, a service of men trained to their duties, and who shall spend
their lives in fulfilling them; a service of competent men to represent us
abroad, and a service of honest men to do the country's business at home,
instead of making the country do theirs and being paid for it into the
bargain. Let us put men into Congress who will cover the seas with our
ships again, as well as make our harbors impassable with a competition of
cheap ferry-boats. Begin here, as you began here more than a hundred years
ago, and as you succeeded then you will succeed now.
"Begin, and go on, and God prosper you; and when the work is done, when
bribery and extortion and all corruption are crushed forever out of our
public life, when the Navigation Act is a thing of the past, and you are
again the carriers of the world's commerce as well as the greatest sharers
in it, then it will be time enough to give a name to the men who shall
have done all these things, Republicans and Democrats together, a new
party, the last and the greatest of all parties that the country has ever
seen. You will find a name, surely enough, that will answer the purpose
then; but whatever that name may be, it will not be forgotten that, for
the third time in the history of our land, Massachusetts has struck the
first and the strongest blow in the struggle for liberty, honor, and
truth."
Few men in public life had as good a right as John Harrington to denounce
all manner of dishonesty. Many a speaker would have raised a sneering
laugh by that last phrase, but even John's enemies admitted that his hands
were clean. Coming from one of themselves it was a strong appeal, and the
applause was long and loud. With a courteous inclination John turned and
left the platform through the door at the back.
He was well enough satisfied. His hearers had been moved for a moment to
enthusiasm. They would go home and on mature reflection would not agree
with him; but a blow struck is a point in the fight so long as it is felt
at all, and John was well pleased at the reception he had met with. He had
avoided every detail, and had confined himself to the widest generalities,
but his homely illustrations would not be forgotten, and his strong
individuality had created a sincere desire in many who had been there that
night to hear him speak again.
For some minutes after John had left the platform, Josephine sat unmoved
in her seat beside her aunt, lost in thought as she watched the surging
crowd below.
"Well," said Miss Schenectady, "you have heard John Harrington now." Joe
started. She had grown used to the implied interrogation her aunt usually
conveyed in that way.
"He is a great man, Aunt Zoë," she said quietly, and looked round. There
was a moisture in her beautiful brown eyes that told of great excitement.
She was very pale too, and looked tired.
"Yes, my dear," said Aunt Zoruiah. "But we had better go home right away,
Joe darling. You are so pale, I suppose you must be a good deal used up."
"Allow me to see you to your carriage," said Pocock Vancouver in dulcet
tones, coming up to the two ladies as they rose.