[Speech of Benjamin Harrison at the thirteenth annual dinner of the New
England Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, December 22, 1893. In
proposing the first toast, "The President of the United States," the
Chairman, Charles Emory Smith, said: "Gentlemen, my first duty is to
give a welcome to our honored guests and a greeting to our worthy
members. My second duty is to make an immediate change of the
programme. Among the distinguished guests who honor us by their
presence to-night is the illustrious patriot and statesman who has
filled--yes, filled, not rattled around in--the great dignity of the
Presidency of the United States. [Applause.] In his career he has won
the admiration of the country not merely by his transcendent abilities
as a statesman, but by his noble qualities as a man. Among other
characteristics, his love of children has touched the heart of the
country. He has promised the little children who are gathered in his
distant home that he will join them in preparing and sharing the joys
of Christmas. It is imperative not that he shall leave us at this
moment but that he shall terminate the three days of cordial and
perhaps somewhat burdensome hospitality which he has enjoyed in
Philadelphia, at a later stage of this evening. In order that he may
be entirely free, and because the first word should be spoken by the
first man at the table, I ask you to join me, at this time, in
drinking a toast to the health of the illustrious patriot, who is as
greatly respected and honored in private life as he was in the
Presidency--General Benjamin Harrison, whom I now have the pleasure of
presenting to you."]
MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY OF
PENNSYLVANIA:--When my good friend and your good neighbor and
President, Mr. Charles Emory Smith, invited me to be present to-night, I
felt a special demand upon me to yield to his request. I thought I owed
him some reparation for appointing him to an office the emoluments of
which did not pay his expenses. [Merriment.] Your cordial welcome
to-night crowns three days of most pleasurable stay in this good City of
Philadelphia. The days have been a little crowded; I think there have
been what our friends of The Four Hundred would probably call "eight
distinct functions;" but your cordiality and the kind words of your
presiding officer quite relieve my fatigue and suggest to me that I
shall rightly repay your kindness by making a very short speech. ["No,
no!"] It is my opinion that these members of the New England Society are
very creditable descendants of the Forefathers. I'm not quite sure that
the Forefathers would share this opinion if they were here; but that
would be by reason of the fact that, notwithstanding the load of
substantial virtues, which they carried through life, their taste had
not been highly cultivated. [Laughter.]
I dread this function which I am now attempting to discharge more than
any other that confronts me in life. The after-dinner speaker, unlike
the poet, is not born,--he is made. I am frequently compelled to meet in
disastrous competition about some dinner-table gentlemen who have
already had their speeches set up in the newspaper offices. They are
given to you as if they were fresh from the lip; you are served with
what they would have you believe to be "impromptu boned turkey;" and
yet, if you could see into the recesses of their intellectual kitchen,
you would see the days of careful preparation which have been given to
these spontaneous utterances. The after-dinner speaker needs to find
somewhere some unworked joker's quarry, where some jokes have been left
without a label on them; he needs to acquire the art of seeming to
pluck, as he goes along in the progress of his speech, as by the
wayside, some flower of rhetoric. He seems to have passed it and to have
plucked it casually,--but it is a boutonniere with tin foil round it.
[Laughter.] You can see, upon close inspection, the mark of the planer
on his well-turned sentences. Now, the competition with gentlemen who
are so cultivated is severe upon one who must speak absolutely upon the
impulse of the occasion. It is either incapacity or downright laziness
that has kept me from competing in the field I have described.
It occurred to me to-day to inquire why you had to associate six States
in order to get up a respectable Society. My friend Halstead [Murat
Halstead] and I have no such trouble. We are Ohio-born, and we do not
need to associate any other State in order to get up a good Society,
wherever there is a civil list of the Government. If you would adopt the
liberal charter method of the Ohio Society, I have no doubt you could
subdivide yourselves into six good societies. The Ohio Society admits to
membership everybody who has lived voluntarily six months in Ohio. No
involuntary resident is permitted to come in. [Laughter.]
But the association of these States and the name "New England" is a part
of an old classification of the States which we used to find in the
geography, and all of that classification has gone except New England
and the South. "The West" has disappeared and "the Middle States" cannot
be identified. Where is "the West"? Why, just now it is at the point of
that long chain of islands that puts off from the Alaska coast; and, if
I am to credit what I read (for I have no sources of information now
except the not absolutely reliable newspaper press), there are some who
believe there are wicked men who want to hitch the end of that chain
into an island farther out in the sea. [Applause.] If that is to be
done, the West would become the East, for I think the Orient has
generally been counted to be the East.
I would not, however, suggest a division of the New England Society. It
is well enough to keep up an association that is one, not only of
neighborhood and of historical association, but of sentiment. Let the
New England Society live, and I fancy it will not be long until you
enjoy the distinction of being the only great subdivision of the States;
for, my fellow-citizens, whatever barriers prejudice may raise, whatever
obstruction the interests of men may interpose, whatever may be the
outrages of cruelty to stay the march of men, that which made the
subdivision called "the Southern States," and all that separated them
from the States of the West and of the North, will be obliterated.
[Cheering.]
I am not sure, though the story runs so, that I have a New England
strain. The fact is that I have recently come to the conclusion that my
family was a little overweighted with ancestry, and I have been looking
after posterity. [Merriment.]
One serious word, gentlemen. The New England character and the
influence of New England men and women have made their impress upon the
whole country; for, even in the South, during the time of slavery,
educated men and women from New England were the tutors and instructors
of the youth of the South in the plantation home. The love of education,
the resolve that it should be general, the love of home with all the
pure and sacred influences that cluster about it, are elements in the
New England character that have a saving force which is incalculable in
this great nation in which we live. Your civil institutions have been
free, high and clean. From the old town-meeting days till now, New
England has believed in and practised the Free Election and the Fair
Count. But, gentlemen, I cannot enumerate all of your virtues--time is
brief, the catalogue long. Will you permit me to thank you and your
honored President for your gracious reception of me to-night?
[Long-continued cheering.]