The Age of Miracles--A Story of Franklin Pierce--Simon Suggs
Billy Sunday--Jefferson Davis and Aaron Burr--Certain Constitutional
Shortcomings
I
The years intervening between 1865 and 1919 may be accounted the most
momentous in all the cycles of the ages. The bells that something more than
half a century ago rang forth to welcome peace in America have been from
that day to this jangled out of tune and harsh with the sounding of war's
alarms in every other part of the world. We flatter ourselves with the
thought that our tragedy lies behind us. Whether this be true or not, the
tragedy of Europe is at hand and ahead. The miracles of modern invention,
surpassing those of old, have made for strife, not for peace. Civilization
has gone backward, not forward. Rulers, intoxicated by the lust of power
and conquest, have lost their reason, and nations, following after, like
cattle led to slaughter, seem as the bereft of Heaven "that knew not God."
We read the story of our yesterdays as it unfolds itself in the current
chronicle; the ascent to the bank-house, the descent to the mad-house, and,
over the glittering paraphernalia that follows to the tomb, we reflect upon
the money-zealot's progress; the dizzy height, the dazzling array, the
craze for more and more and more; then the temptation and fall, millions
gone, honor gone, reason gone--the innocent and the gentle, with the
guilty, dragged through the mire of the prison, and the court--and we draw
back aghast. Yet, if we speak of these things we are called pessimists.
I have always counted myself an optimist. I know that I do not lie awake
nights musing on the ingratitude either of my stars or my countrymen. I
pity the man who does. Looking backward, I have sincere compassion for
Webster and for Clay! What boots it to them, now that they lie beneath the
mold, and that the drums and tramplings of nearly seventy years of the
world's strifes and follies and sordid ambitions and mean repinings, and
longings, and laughter, and tears, have passed over their graves, what
boots it to them, now, that they failed to get all they wanted? There is
indeed snug lying in the churchyard; but the flowers smell as sweet and
the birds sing as merry, and the stars look down as loving upon the
God-hallowed mounds of the lowly and the poor, as upon the man-bedecked
monuments of the Kings of men. All of us, the least with the greatest, let
us hope and believe shall attain immortal life at last. What was there for
Webster, what was there for Clay to quibble about? I read with a kind of
wonder, and a sickening sense of the littleness of great things, those
passages in the story of their lives where it is told how they stormed
and swore, when tidings reached them that they had been balked of their
desires.
Yet they might have been so happy; so happy in their daily toil, with its
lofty aims and fair surroundings; so happy in the sense of duty done;
so happy, above all, in their own Heaven-sent genius, with its noble
opportunities and splendid achievements. They should have emulated the
satisfaction told of Franklin Pierce. It is related that an enemy was
inveighing against him, when an alleged friend spoke up and said: "You
should not talk so about the President, I assure you that he is not at all
the man you describe him to be. On the contrary, he is a man of the rarest
gifts and virtues. He has long been regarded as the greatest orator in New
England, and the greatest lawyer in New England, and surely no one of his
predecessors ever sent such state papers to Congress."
"How are you going to prove it," angrily retorted the first speaker.
"I don't need to prove it," coolly replied the second. "He admits it."
I cannot tell just how I should feel if I were President, though, on the
whole, I fancy fairly comfortable, but I am quite certain that I would not
exchange places with any of the men who have been President, and I have
known quite a number of them.