[Speech of Henry E. Howland, President of the New England Society in the
City of New York, at their ninety-fourth annual dinner, New York,
December 22, 1899.]
FELLOW-MEMBERS OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY:--It is my agreeable
duty to receive this weary, way-worn band of Pilgrims upon the occasion
of their 279th landing upon these bleak and arid shores, and, like
Samoset on the occasion of your first arrival, to welcome you to the
scanty fare and the privations and sufferings that are incident to this
ledge of the old Plymouth Rock. [Applause.]
The traditions of the early entertainment of Massasoit and his warriors
at Plymouth, lasting several days, to cement a friendship which was
never broken, when heavy drafts were made upon the little stock of New
England rum, imported Hollands, bear's meat and Indian corn, have here
been renewed to such an extent that, like them, we doubtless feel that
the "earth is ours and the fulness thereof." [Laughter.] Though, if
Plymouth Rock and the Waldorf-Astoria are synonymous terms for fulness,
we should think that the latter was the more synonymous of the two.
[Laughter.] The surroundings of the two occasions may differ--velvet
carpets, groaning tables, genial temperature and electric lights are an
excellent substitute for log floors, a restricted larder, the icy chill
and the winter stars. The grim, stern Pilgrim with the austere face and
peaked hat, and the lean, wild, loping Indian are here supplanted by a
company whose well-rounded figures and genial faces reflect the
assurance of the possession of sky-scraping buildings, pipe lines,
through lines, warehouses, well-stuffed deposit vaults and comfortable
bank accounts [laughter], upon whom smile from the boxes the blessings
which, like those of Providence, come from above [applause] and cause us
to echo the sentiment unconsciously expressed by the lady who was
distributing tracts in the streets of London. She handed one to a
cabman; he glanced at it, handed it back, touched his hat and politely
said: "Thank you, lady, I am a married man." [Laughter.] She looked
nervously at the title, which was, "Abide with me" [laughter], and
hurriedly departed. Under this inspiration we agree with the proverb of
the Eastern sage: "To be constant in love to one is good; to be constant
to many is great." [Laughter.] But we must remember, while the critical
eyes of our households are upon us, that our halos will never be too
small for our heads. [Laughter.]
Under these favoring conditions we celebrate the glories of our
ancestors, the unparalleled results of their achievements, and
ourselves. I hope you will find that the only defect in my perfunctory
remarks as the presiding officer will be their brevity.
Remembering some past occurrences on occasions like this, we agree with
the pupil who was asked by his teacher, "What is the meaning of
elocution?" and he answered: "It is the way people are put to death in
some States." [Laughter.] But with this array of speakers before you,
full of unwonted possibilities, you will not wonder if I feel like the
undertaker in Sixth Avenue who displayed a sign in his window: "It is a
pleasure to show goods." [Laughter.]
The Society has shared in the all-pervading prosperity which illumines
the land with a prospect of its indefinite continuance. It numbers 1,504
members, and its invested funds aggregate the sum of $108,750. It has
been liberal in its charitable contributions; it has resisted all
attempts like those made against some of our large life insurance
companies to compel it to distribute its surplus [laughter], and,
refuting the statement of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge, who said that
the "chief duty of trustees was to commit judicious breaches of trust,"
it has imitated the stern integrity of that bank cashier who upon a warm
day sat down on the neighborly side of a sheet of postage stamps, and
had to go home and make a change of clothing before he could get his
books to balance. [Laughter.] And, taking warning from the slogan of the
Bryanized Democracy, which caused a quotation from a message of one of
our modern statesmen that "a public office is a public trust," to be met
with the cry "Down with the trusts," our treasurer carefully avoids
handling United States nickels, for they bear the motto "In God We
Trust," and the Society might be met with the same attack and come into
disrepute on that account. [Laughter.]
In these days, when the Populist, fusionist, and demagogue is
endeavoring, like Mrs. Partington, to sweep back the ocean tide of
prosperity with a broom, clogging the wheels of industry and seeking by
legislative enactment to reverse the laws of nature and of political
economy, which are immutable by Divine decree, we can commend to them
the answer of an examiner of a young man who applied for admission to
the bar. He failed utterly in questions upon contracts, partnership,
corporation law, commercial paper and real estate, and was told so.
"Well," he said, "won't you try me on the statutes? I am pretty strong
on them." "Well, what's the use," the examiner replied, "when some d--n
fool Legislature may repeal all you know." [Laughter and applause.]
Forty-seven members have died during the year. The list is entirely made
up of men distinguished in all the pursuits of life--who wrote their
names in bright characters upon the history of the City and State, and
whose memory will always remain as a precious legacy and an example to
those who succeed them. Fourteen had passed the Psalmist's limit of
life, and nine had passed their eightieth year. In it are enrolled the
names of William H. Appleton, the honored head of the great publishing
firm known wherever the English language is spoken, to whose reputation
he contributed so much by his clear intelligence, breadth of views and
spotless character.
Isaac H. Bailey, for several years the President of this Society, an
honorable merchant and a trusted public officer.
William Dowd, the treasurer of the Society for fifteen years;
distinguished in finance and the management of large corporate
interests, and endeared to a host of friends by the charm of his genial
nature.
Gen. George S. Greene, the oldest living graduate of the West Point
Military Academy, who rendered valiant and distinguished service on many
battle-fields of the Civil War, who was the faithful and efficient head
of the Croton Aqueduct Board for many years; was represented in the
military service of his country by several distinguished sons and, until
his death, in his ninety-eighth year, retained all his faculties
undimmed--a soldier and a citizen of whom his country was justly proud.
[Applause.]
Roswell P. Flower, an honored Governor of this State, eminent as a
philanthropist and financier, a leader among strong men.
William H. Webb, a pioneer shipbuilder, with a name famous wherever
American commerce extended, a rugged, iron man who stood four square to
all the winds of heaven, generous and tender-hearted as a child, who for
forty-five years never failed in his attendance at the dinners of this
Society, and who left a reputation for philanthropy and public spirit
unsurpassed in this city of generous giving.
John G. Moore, John Brooks, Edward H. R. Lyman, Edward A. Quintard, Dr.
Charles Inslee Pardee, and all the others to whom the limit of time will
not allow a tribute worthy of their honorable lives and work.
We do well to recall upon such occasions as this, as an inspiration, the
story of the emigration of our Pilgrim ancestors to America, involving,
as it does, the whole modern development, diffusion and organization of
English liberty, which lives and breathes and burns in legend and in
song. It is unparalleled in the annals of the world, in the majesty of
its purpose and the poverty of its means, the weakness of the beginning
and the grandeur of the result. It is unparalleled in classic or modern
history, in its exhibition of courage, patience, persistence,
steadfastness in devotion to principle. Beginning with the hasty flight
from Lincolnshire to Holland, the peaceful life in exile, the perilous
ocean voyage in a crazy craft in mid-winter, the frail settlement at
Plymouth--a shred of the most tenacious life in Europe--floating over
the waste of waters and clinging on the bleakest edge of America, beset
by Indians, wild beasts and disease, starving, frozen and dying, remote
from succor and beyond the knowledge of their kin, like a seed from the
Old World floated to the New by ocean currents, containing the elements
which, like the mustard seed, should yield a hundred fold and overspread
and dominate a continent, until the prophecy familiar to the Pilgrims
should be fulfilled: "The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose,
a little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great nation."
[Applause.]
The Archbishop and Ministers of King James, who drove these men and the
26,000 who followed them, the flower of the English Puritans, from
England, like Louis XIV, when he sent the Huguenots into exile by the
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, furnished an example to that master
of the school where the Eton system of flogging prevailed. On a Saturday
morning the delinquents were called up to be flogged. One of the boys
inquired, "What am I to be punished for, sir?" "I don't know, but your
name is down on the list, and I shall have to go through with it," and
the flogging was administered. The boy made such a fuss that the master
looked over the list on his return to his rooms, to see whether he had
made a mistake, and found that he had whipped the confirmation class.
[Laughter.]
They brought the foundation of a free people, they converted the
wilderness of a continent, they established the New England home, rich
only in piety, education, liberty, industry and character, from which
has gone out the best inspiration of the Republic they forecast.
There have been times in the later history of the country when the
Puritan was not altogether popular, and the feeling entertained toward
him and his descendants was expressed like that at a Liberal meeting in
Scotland, where the proceedings were being opened by prayer, and the
reverend gentleman prayed fervently that "the Liberals might hang a'
thegither." He was interrupted by a loud and irreverent "Amen" from the
back of the hall. "Not, O Lord," went on the clergyman, "in the sense
which that profane scoffer would have ye to understand, but that they
may hang thegither in accord and concord." "I dinna care so much what
kind of a cord it is," struck in the voice, "sae lang as it is a strong
cord." [Laughter.]
Fortunately for them, and perhaps for the world, opinions differed
enough to give them a chance. "You can't always tell," said a man, at
the end of a discussion, "what one's neighbors think of him." "I came
mighty near knowing once," said a citizen, with a reminiscent look, "but
the jury disagreed." [Laughter.] But with the Puritans, when discussion
ceased and other arguments began, the result was like that when the lady
said to her clergyman, who was paying her an afternoon call, of her
little boy, who bore the marks of a struggle: "Johnny has been a bad
little boy to-day; he has been fighting and has got a black eye." "So I
see," said the clergyman. "Come into the next room with me, Johnny, and
I will pray with you." "You had better go home and pray with your own
little boy, he has got two black eyes." [Laughter.]
The forty-one families who came in the "Mayflower," and the thousand of
English Puritans who came in the next decade, are not entitled to all
the credit for the development of the country, for there were others of
their kind in Virginia, and, unlike the Boers of the Transvaal, they
gave later comers a show. [Laughter and applause.] The process of
appropriation by one people of a country, even if they are the first
settlers, can be carried too far even for advantage to them or to
inspire credulity in its possibility. A returned traveller, relating his
adventures, said: "The most remarkable experience I ever had occurred a
short time ago in Russia. I was sleighing on the Steppes, miles from my
destination, when, to my horror, I found I was pursued by a pack of
wolves; I fired blindly into the pack, killing one of them, and, to my
relief, saw the others stop to devour him; after doing this, however,
they still came on. I repeated the shot, with the same result, and each
shot gave me an opportunity to whip up my horses. Finally there was only
one wolf left, yet on it came with its fierce eyes glaring in
anticipation of a good hot supper." "Hold on, there," said a man who had
been listening, "by your way of reckoning, that last wolf must have had
the rest of the pack inside of him." [Laughter.] "Well," said the
traveller, "now I remember it, he did wobble a bit." [Laughter.]
It was wise in our forefathers to welcome those who, like them, were
pioneers in the wilderness, to give them equal rights and to assimilate
them into American citizenship. The qualities of which we boast in our
Pilgrim ancestors still linger with their descendants, though among
75,000,000 of people there may not be enough to go around. The
expectation of it would be what Dr. Johnson said of a man who had
married his third wife, as the "triumph of hope over experience."
[Laughter.] But we must, on occasions like this, make some assumptions,
like the lady of whom a friend said: "She puts on a good deal of style
now she has a box at the opera." "Good gracious," said the other lady,
"the woman must put on something when she goes to the opera."
[Laughter.]
Too many, it is true, deserve to be under the suspicion expressed by the
market-man who was exhibiting his _array_ of "newly-laid eggs, fresh
eggs, and plain eggs," to a young housekeeper, who finally asked, as to
the latter: "Are these eggs really fresh?" "Well, madam," he replied,
"we call them Saturday night eggs; they've tried all the week to be
good." [Laughter.] And we are so compromising and tender in dealing with
doubtful subjects that we follow the advice given to a man who asked how
to tell a bad egg: Well, if you have anything to tell to a bad egg you
had better break it gently. [Laughter.] Some have that kind of a
conscience which was described by a small boy as the thing that makes
you feel sorry when you get found out, and their idea of commercial
integrity was expressed by the man who said, proudly, "At last I can
look the world in the face as an honest man. I owe no one anything; the
last claim against me is outlawed." Some aim high, but from the result
they must have shut their eyes when they fired, and although as a Nation
we pride ourselves upon our common sense, so that we can truly say not
every man is made a fool of, the observer of men and things might say
every man has the raw material in him. [Laughter.]
But seriously speaking, we abate in no degree the claim that the best
traditions of our forefathers have not degenerated in these modern days.
Our hearts beat with a quicker throb at the recollection of the
achievements of these last pregnant years; the eye lights with
enthusiasm at the sight of the flag whose fluttering folds have
witnessed such scenes of danger and inspired such daring deeds, and our
voices shout in unison of acclaim the achievements of what a wondering
African called "the angry Saxon race." [Applause.]
The people have stood for humanity, honesty, order and progress. Its
representatives in civil life have obeyed their behests. The American
Regular has shown in his stern resolve, his self-control, his obedience
to orders, his contempt of danger, that while he leads a forlorn hope in
war, he is the advance guard of liberty and justice, law and order,
peace and happiness. [Applause.]
"No State'll call him noble son,
He ain't no lady's pet;
But let a row start anyhow,
They'll send for him, you bet.
He packs his little knapsack up
And starts off in the van,
To start the fight, and start it right,
The Regular Army man."
[Applause.]
The gallant officers who, true to the spirit of the service, stood up on
the firing line in Cuba and the Philippines, charging heights, wading
rivers and storming the trenches at the head of their men, have shed new
glory upon the American Army, and none more illustriously than that
splendid soldier, Major-General Henry W. Lawton [prolonged applause],
who, after a distinguished and brilliant service of nearly forty years
in two wars, and continuous Indian fighting, has received the soldier's
summons on the field of battle, and given with his life his last pledge
of devotion to his country. The flag that covers him never shrouded a
finer soldier or a more typical American. [Applause.]
"Close his eyes; his work is done!
What to him is friend or foeman,
Rise of moon or set of sun,
Hand of man or kiss of woman?
"As man may he fought his fight,
Proved his truth by his endeavor--
Let him sleep in solemn night,
Sleep forever and forever."
Such men have their counterparts in the very pink and flower of the
chivalry of England, who face their foe standing, and are now charging
full front and fearlessly into the storm of shot and shell that awaits
them, deeming it, in the language of young Hubert Hervey, "a grand thing
to die for the expansion of the Empire." [Applause.]
The pride of England in its navy, is justly matched by that of every
American in his own. [Applause.] Its record, from the days of John Paul
Jones to those of Dewey and Sampson [applause and cheers], is
unsurpassed in the history of the world. During these hundred glorious
years, its whole personnel, from Admiral to blue-jacket, has left upon
the pages of history a shining story, stainless, brilliant and undying,
of honor, skill, devotion and daring that stirs the heart because
inspiring and ennobling. The English poet might justly say:--
"The spirit of our fathers
Shall start from every wave;
For the deck it was their field of fame,
And ocean was their grave."