serving a term of imprisonment in the state penitentiary; I ask you to
send him back there again for the remainder of his life. Abe Barrow is
out of date. This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city
where he left a prairie town; a bank where he spun his roulette-wheel;
this magnificent courthouse instead of a vigilance committee! He is
there, in the prisoner's pen, a convicted murderer and an unconvicted
assassin, the last of his race,--the bullies and bad men of the
border,--a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the sight of
men. And I ask you, gentlemen, to put him away where he will not hear
the voice of man nor children's laughter, nor see a woman's smile. Bury
him with the bitter past, with the lawlessness that has gone--that has
gone, thank God--and which must not return."
The district attorney sat down suddenly, and was conscious of nothing
until the foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder
in the second degree.
Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in his
power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years' confinement
in the state penitentiary, or for the remainder of his life.
"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said with an old
man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own
behalf?"
Barrow's face was white with the prison tan, and pinched and hollow-
eyed and worn. When he spoke his voice had the huskiness which comes
from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.
"I don't know, Judge," he said, "that I have anything to say in my own
behalf. I guess what the gentleman said about me is all there is to
say. I _am_ a back number, I _am_ out of date; I _was_ a loafer and a
blackguard. He told you I had no part or parcel in this city, or in
this world; that I belonged to the past; that I ought to be dead. Now
that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city, and to
this world--and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me,
and I'll have to leave behind me when I go back to it. I mean my wife.
You, sir, remember her, sir, when I married her twelve years ago. She
gave up everything a woman ought to have, to come to me. She thought
she was going to be happy with me; that's why she come, I guess. Maybe
she was happy for about two weeks. After that first two weeks her life,
sir, was a hell, and I made it a hell. Respectable women wouldn't speak
to her because she was my wife--and she had no children. That was her
life. She lived alone over the dance-hall, and sometimes when I was
drunk--I beat her.
"At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and they sent me to the pen
for ten years, and she was free. She could have gone back to her folks
and got a divorce if she'd wanted to, and never seen me again. It was
an escape most women'd gone down on their knees and thanked their Maker
for.
"But what did this woman do--my wife, the woman I misused and beat and
dragged down in the mud with me? She was too mighty proud to go back to
her people, or to the friends who shook her when she was in trouble;
and she sold out the place, and bought a ranch with the money, and
worked it by herself, worked it day and night, until in ten years she
had made herself an old woman, as you see she is to-day.
"And for what? To get _me_ free again; to bring _me_ things to eat in
jail, and picture papers, and tobacco--when she was living on bacon and
potatoes, and drinking alkali water--working to pay for a lawyer to
fight for _me_--to pay for the _best_ lawyer.
"And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out of
jail to show her how I feel about it. It's all I've thought of when I
was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for her,
working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.
"And I can't, I can't! It's too late! It's too late! Don't send me back
for life! Give me a few years to work for her--to show her what I feel
here, what I never felt for her before. Look at her, gentlemen, look
how worn she is, and poorly, and look at her hands, and you men must
feel how I feel--I don't ask you for myself. I don't want to go free on
my own account. My God! Judge, don't bury me alive, as that man asked
you to. Give me this last chance. Let me prove that what I'm saying is
true."
Judge Truax looked at the papers on his desk for some seconds, and
raised his head, coughing as he did so.
"It lies--it lies at the discretion of this Court to sentence the
prisoner to a term of imprisonment of two years, or for an indefinite
period, or for life. Owing to--on account of certain circumstances
which were--have arisen--this sentence is suspended. This Court stands
adjourned."
PART THREE
PLATFORM PRACTICE
THE SPEECH OF FORMAL OCCASION
THE BENEFITS OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION
From an address by the President to the students of Harvard University,
at the announcement of Academic Distinctions, 1909
BY ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL
This meeting is held not merely to honor the men who have won prizes,
attained high rank, or achieved distinction in studies. In a larger
sense it is a tribute paid by the University to the ideals of
scholarship. It is a public confession of faith in the aims for which
the University was established. We may, therefore, not inappropriately
consider here the nature and significance of scholarship.
Without attempting an exhaustive catalogue of the benefits of
education, we may note three distinct objects of college study. The
first is the development of the mental powers with a view to their use
in any subsequent career. In its broadest sense this may be called
training for citizenship, for we must remember that good citizenship
does not consist exclusively in rendering public service in political
and philanthropic matters. It includes also conducting an industrial or
professional career so as not to leave the public welfare out of sight.
Popular government is exacting. It implies that in some form every man
shall voluntarily consecrate a part of his time and force to the state,
and the better the citizen, the greater the effort he will make. On the
function of colleges in fitting men for citizenship and for active
work, much emphasis has been laid of late. Yet it is not the only aim
of college studies. Another object is cultivation of the mind,
refinement of taste, a development of the qualities that distinguish
the civilized man from the barbarian. Nor does the value of these
things lie in personal satisfaction alone. There is a culture that is
selfish and exclusive, that is self-centered and conceited. The
intellectual snob is quite as repellant as any other. But this is true
of the moral distortion of all good qualities. The culture that narrows
the sympathies, instead of enlarging them, has surely missed the object
that should give its chief worth and dignity. The culture that reveals
beauty in all its forms, that refines the sensibilities, and expands
the mental horizon, that, without a sense of superiority, desires to
share these things with others, and makes the lives of all men better
worth living, is like the glow of fire in a cold room. It is a form of
social service of a high order.
A third benefit of college education is the contact it affords with the
work of creative imagination. The highest type of scholar is the
creative scholar, just as the highest type of citizen is the statesman.
The greatest figures in history, as almost every one will admit, are
the thinkers and the rulers of men. People will always differ in the
relative value they ascribe to these two supreme forms of human power.
But if one may indulge in apocalyptic visions, I should prefer in
another world to be worthy of the friendship of Aristotle rather than
of Alexander, of Shakespeare or Newton than of Napoleon or Frederick
the Great.
When I spoke of the benefit of college life in training for
citizenship, and in imparting culture, I was obviously dealing with
things which lie within the reach of every student; but in speaking of
creative scholarship you may think that I am appealing only to the few
men who have the rare gift of creative genius. But happily the progress
of the world is not in the exclusive custody of the occasional men of
genius. Great originality is, indeed, rare; but on a smaller scale it
is not uncommon, and the same principles apply to the production of all
creative work. The great scholar and the lesser intellectual lights
differ in brilliancy, but the same process must be followed to bring
them to their highest splendor. Nor is it the genius alone, or even the
man of talent, who can enjoy and aid productive thought. It is not
given to all men to possess creative scholarship themselves; but most
men by following its footsteps can learn to respect it and feel its
charm; and for any man who passes through college without doing so,
college education has been in one of its most vital elements a failure.
If he has not recognized the glowing imagination, the lofty ideals, the
patience and the modesty, that characterize the true scholar, his time
here has been spent, not perhaps without profit, but without
inspiration.
All productive work is largely dependent upon appreciation by the
community. The great painters of Italy would have been sterile had not
the citizens of Florence been eager to carry Cimabue's masterpiece in
triumph through the streets. Kant would never have written among a
people who despised philosophy; and the discoveries of our own day
would have been impossible in an unscientific age. Every man who has
learned to respect creative scholarship can enter into its spirit, and
by respecting it he helps to foster it.
WHAT THE COLLEGE GIVES
From "Girls and Education," a commencement address, Bryn Mawr College,
1911, by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's works.
BY LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS
One of the best gifts that a college can bestow is the power of taking
a new point of view through putting ourselves into another's place. To
many students this comes hard, but come it must, as they hope to be
saved.
To the American world the name of Charles Eliot Norton stands for all
that is fastidious, even for what is over-fastidious; but Charles Eliot
Norton's collection of verse and prose called "The Heart of Oak Books"
shows a catholicity which few of his critics could approach, a refined
literary hospitality not less noteworthy than the refined human
hospitality of his Christmas Eve at Shady Hill. As an old man this
interpreter of Dante saw and hailed with delight the genius of Mr.
Kipling. If you leave college without catholicity of taste, something
is wrong either with the college or with you.
As in literature, so in life. The greatest teachers--even Christ
himself--have taught nothing greater than the power of seeing with the
eyes of another soul. "Browning," said a woman who loves poetry, "seems
to me not so much man as God." For Browning, beyond all men in the past
century, beyond nearly all men of all time, could throw himself into
the person of another.
"God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her,"
said this same great poet, writing to his wife. But Browning has as
many soul-sides as humanity. Hence it has been truly called a new life,
like conversion, or marriage, or the mystery of a great sorrow,--a
change and a bracing change in our outlook on the whole world, to
discover Browning. The college should be our Browning, revealing the
motive power of every life, the poetry of good and bad. It is only the
"little folk of little soul" who come out of college as the initiated
members of an exclusive set. Justify yourself and your college years by
your catholic democracy.
It is the duty of the college not to train only, but to inspire; to
inspire not to learning only, but to a disciplined appreciation of the
best in literature, in art, and in life, to a catholic taste, to a
universal sympathy. It is the duty of the student to take the
inspiration, to be not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but to
justify four years of delight, by scholarship at once accurate and
sympathetic, by a finer culture, by a leadership without self-seeking
or pride, by a whole-souled democracy. How simple and how old it all
is! Yet it is not so simple that any one man or woman has done it to
perfection; nor so old that any one part of it fails to offer fresh
problems and fresh stimulus to the most ambitious of you all.
Nothing is harder than to take freely and eagerly the best that is
offered us, and never turn away to the pursuit of false gods. Now the
best that is offered in college is the inspiration to learn, and having
learned, to do:--
"Friends of the great, the high, the perilous years,
Upon the brink of mighty things we stand--
Of golden harvests and of silver tears,
And griefs and pleasures that like grains of sand
Gleam in the hourglass, yield their place and die."
So said the college poet.
"Art without an ideal," said a great woman, "is neither nature nor art.
The question involves the whole difference between Phidias and Mme.
Tussaud." Let us never forget that the chief business of college
teachers and college taught is the giving and receiving of ideals, and
that the ideal is a burning and a shining light, not now only, or now
and a year or two more, but for all time. What else is the patriot's
love of country, the philosopher's love of truth, the poet's love of
beauty, the teacher's love of learning, the good man's love of an
honest life, than keeping the ideal, not merely to look at, but to see
by? In its light, and only in its light, the greatest things are done.
Thus the ideal is not merely the most beautiful thing in the world; it
is the source of all high efficiency. In every change, in every joy or
sorrow that the coming years may bring, do you who graduate to-day
remember that nothing is so practical as a noble ideal steadily and
bravely pursued, and that now, as of old, it is the wise men who see
and follow the guiding star.
MEMORIAL DAY ADDRESS
From "After-Dinner and Other Speeches," with the permission of the
author.
BY JOHN D. LONG
In memory of the dead, in honor of the living, for inspiration to our
children, we gather to-day to deck the graves of our patriots with
flowers, to pledge commonwealth and town and citizen to fresh
recognition of the surviving soldier, and to picture yet again the
romance, the reality, the glory, the sacrifice of his service. As if it
were but yesterday, you recall him. He had but turned twenty. The
exquisite tint of youthful health was in his cheek. His pure heart
shone from frank, outspeaking eyes. His fair hair clustered from
beneath his cap. He had pulled a stout oar in the college race, or
walked the most graceful athlete on the village green. He had just
entered on the vocation of his life. The doorway of his home at this
season of the year was brilliant in the dewy morn with the clambering
vine and fragrant flower, as in and out he went, the beloved of mother
and sisters, and the ideal of a New England youth:--
"In face and shoulders like a god he was;
For o'er him had the goddess breathed the charm
Of youthful locks, the ruddy glow of youth,
A generous gladness in his eyes: such grace
As carver's hand to ivory gives, or when
Silver or Parian stone in yellow gold
Is set."
And when the drum beat, when the first martyr's blood sprinkled the
stones of Baltimore, he took his place in the ranks and went forward.
You remember his ingenuous and glowing letters to his mother, written
as if his pen were dipped in his very heart. How novel seemed to him
the routine of service, the life of camp and march! How eager the wish
to meet the enemy and strike his first blow for the good cause! What
pride at the promotion that came and put its chevron on his arm or its
strap upon his shoulder!
They took him prisoner. He wasted in Libby and grew gaunt and haggard
with the horror of his sufferings and with pity for the greater horror
of the sufferings of his comrades who fainted and died at his side. He
tunneled the earth and escaped. Hungry and weak, in terror of
recapture, he followed by night the pathway of the railroad. He slept
in thickets and sank in swamps. He saw the glitter of horsemen who
pursued him. He knew the bloodhound was on his track. He reached the
line; and, with his hand grasping at freedom, they caught and took him
back to his captivity. He was exchanged at last; and you remember, when
he came home on a short furlough, how manly and war-worn he had grown.
But he soon returned to the ranks and to the welcome of his comrades.
They recall him now alike with tears and pride. In the rifle pits
around Petersburg you heard his steady voice and firm command. Some one
who saw him then fancied that he seemed that day like one who forefelt
the end. But there was no flinching as he charged. He had just turned
to give a cheer when the fatal ball struck him. There was a convulsion
of the upward hand. His eyes, pleading and loyal, turned their last
glance to the flag. His lips parted. He fell dead, and at nightfall lay
with his face to the stars. Home they brought him, fairer than Adonis
over whom the goddess of beauty wept. They buried him in the village
churchyard under the green turf. Year by year his comrades and his kin,
nearer than comrades, scatter his grave with flowers. Do you ask who he
was? He was in every regiment and every company. He went out from every
Massachusetts village. He sleeps in every Massachusetts burying ground.
Recall romance, recite the names of heroes of legend and song, but
there is none that is his peer.
WILLIAM MCKINLEY
From an address in the United States Senate
BY JOHN HAY
For the third time the Congress of the United States are assembled to
commemorate the life and the death of a President slain by the hand of
an assassin. The attention of the future historian will be attracted to
the features which reappear with startling sameness in all three of
these awful crimes: the uselessness, the utter lack of consequence of
the act; the obscurity, the insignificance of the criminal; the
blamelessness--so far as in our sphere of existence the best of men may
be held blameless--of the victim. Not one of our murdered Presidents
had an enemy in the world; they were all of such preeminent purity of
life that no pretext could be given for the attack of passional crime;
they were all men of democratic instincts, who could never have
offended the most jealous advocates of equality; they were of kindly
and generous nature, to whom wrong or injustice was impossible; of
moderate fortune, whose slender means nobody could envy. They were men
of austere virtue, of tender heart, of eminent abilities, which they
had devoted with single minds to the good of the Republic. If ever men
walked before God and man without blame, it was these three rulers of
our people. The only temptation to attack their lives offered was their
gentle radiance--to eyes hating the light that was offense enough.
The obvious elements which enter into the fame of a public man are few
and by no means recondite. The man who fills a great station in a
period of change, who leads his country successfully through a time of
crisis; who, by his power of persuading and controlling others, has
been able to command the best thought of his age, so as to leave his
country in a moral or material condition in advance of where he found
it,--such a man's position in history is secure. If, in addition to
this, his written or spoken words possess the subtle qualities which
carry them far and lodge them in men's hearts; and, more than all, if
his utterances and actions, while informed with a lofty morality, are
yet tinged with the glow of human sympathy,--the fame of such a man
will shine like a beacon through the mists of ages--an object of
reverence, of imitation, and of love. It should be to us an occasion of
solemn pride that in the three great crises of our history such a man
was not denied us. The moral value to a nation of a renown such as
Washington's and Lincoln's and McKinley's is beyond all computation. No
loftier ideal can be held up to the emulation of ingenuous youth. With
such examples we cannot be wholly ignoble. Grateful as we may be for
what they did, let us be still more grateful for what they were. While
our daily being, our public policies, still feel the influence of their
work, let us pray that in our spirits their lives may be voluble,
calling us upward and onward.
There is not one of us but feels prouder of his native land because the
august figure of Washington presided over its beginnings; no one but
vows it a tenderer love because Lincoln poured out his blood for it; no
one but must feel his devotion for his country renewed and kindled when
he remembers how McKinley loved, revered, and served it, showed in his
life how a citizen should live, and in his last hour taught us how a
gentleman could die.
ROBERT E. LEE
From an address at the unveiling of a statue of General Lee, at
Washington and Lee University, 1883
BY JOHN W. DANIEL
Mounted in the field and at the head of his troops, a glimpse of Lee
was an inspiration. His figure was as distinctive as that of Napoleon.
The black slouch hat, the cavalry boots, the dark cape, the plain gray
coat without an ornament but the three stars on the collar, the calm,
victorious face, the splendid, manly figure on the gray war horse,--he
looked every inch the true knight--the grand, invincible champion of a
great principle.
The men who wrested victory from his little band stood wonder-stricken
and abashed when they saw how few were those who dared oppose them, and
generous admiration burst into spontaneous tribute to the splendid
leader who bore defeat with the quiet resignation of a hero. The men
who fought under him never revered or loved him more than on the day he
sheathed his sword. Had he but said the word, they would have died for
honor. It was because he said the word that they resolved to live for
duty.
Plato congratulated himself, first, that he was born a man; second,
that he had the happiness of being a Greek; and third, that he was a
contemporary of Sophocles. And in this audience to-day, and here and
there the wide world over, is many an one who wore the gray, who
rejoices that he was born a man to do a man's part for his suffering
country; that he had the glory of being a Confederate; and who feels a
justly proud and glowing consciousness in his bosom when he says unto
himself: "I was a follower of Robert E. Lee. I was a soldier in the
army of Northern Virginia."
As president of Washington and Lee University, General Lee exhibited
qualities not less worthy and heroic than those displayed on the broad
and open theater of conflict when the eyes of nations watched his every
action. In the quiet walks of academic life, far removed from "war or
battle's sound," came into view the towering grandeur, the massive
splendor, and the loving-kindness of his character. There he revealed
in manifold gracious hospitalities, tender charities, and patient,
worthy counsels, how deep and pure and inexhaustible were the fountains
of his virtues. And loving hearts delight to recall, as loving lips
will ever delight to tell, the thousand little things he did which sent
forth lines of light to irradiate the gloom of the conquered land and
to lift up the hopes and cheer the works of his people.
Come we then to-day in loyal love to sanctify our memories, to purify
our hopes, to make strong all good intent by communion with the spirit
of him who, being dead, yet speaketh. Let us crown his tomb with the
oak, the emblem of his strength, and with the laurel, the emblem of his
glory. And as we seem to gaze once more on him we loved and hailed as
Chief, the tranquil face is clothed with heaven's light, and the mute
lips seem eloquent with the message that in life he spoke, "There is a
true glory and a true honor; the glory of duty done, the honor of the
integrity of principle."
FAREWELL ADDRESS TO THE UNITED STATES SENATE
BY HENRY CLAY