NUMEN. RESPONSE OF JOS. B. CUMMING TO THE TOAST, THE MAYFLOWER AT THE 79th ANNUAL DINNER OP THE N E W ENGLAND SOCIETY, Of O Ti f i i' 1 tr o r i S . O ■ , DECEMBER 22 , 1898. Chronicle Job Printing Co. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Duke University Libraries https://archive.org/details/numenresponseofjOOcumm NUMBN. RESPONSE OF JOS. B. CUMMING TO THE TOAST, THE MAYFLOWER AT THE 79th ANNUAL DINNER OF THE NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY, Of* C It a rlt?sst< > n S. O • , DECEMBER 22, 1898. Chronicle Job Printing Co. The third regular toast was “The Mayflower,” to which the Hon. Joseph B. Cumming responded as follows: Not long ago I saw a little engraving which purported to be a picture of the ark of the Pilgrim Fathers, the “Mayflower.” If anyone cares to see it he will find it illustrating the very brief sketch of John Alden in Appleton’s Encyclopaedia of Biography. But I would not advise anyone to .waste time in 'looking it up, for it is a very insignificant little picture. I would not trust myself here in a seaport city to handle nauti- cal terms, even if it were my purpose to try to give a description of the Mayflower. I shall only say that to my landsman’s eye she presents in this little sketch a very forlorn spectacle. It is true that in this picture her masts and yards are bare. The eye rests on nothing but wood and ‘hemp. Not a single sail woos a favoring breeze. No voyagers tread her deck. A very different sight might she have been on some autumn day of' that long voyage when, with crowding canvas, she rose and dipped on a sunlit sea. But in the picture I have referred to a very dreary and depressing little craft she seems to be. Plow small, too, was she in fact. One hund- red and eighty tons her burthen. And how slow she must have been with her broad hull and rounded prow. But perhaps this dispiriting picture bears not the slightest resemblance to that lit- tle barque of immortal memory. It is not difficult to imagine that this picture was only an artist’s fancy, a sort of symbol, his con- ception, expressing itself in the forms of art, instead of in words, of the dreary outlook of that momentous cruise, as it must have appeared at the time to a scornful world and even to the subli- mated voyagers themselves — unless these latter, among the other spiritual endowments which exalted them above all the ills of this world, possessed the gift of prophetic vision. Ah, indeed, with its aid, looking down the vista of the future and beholding what that ship’s company were to be in their rela- tion to a great nation and- its marvelous career, they woulji have seen that the name of that wretched little craft would live as long as that of any of the famous argosies, which, in history or in myth, 4 • have sailed the waters of this planet. They would 'have known that neither the Argo of Jason, with its seekers for the golden fleece, nor the ships of Hiram bringing rich material for Solo- mon’s temple, nor the high turre'ted galleon San Marten of the in- vincible Armada, nor the ship with Castor and Pollux for its sign a*nd the Apostle Paul for its passenger, nor the silken-sailed and silver-oared galley of Cleopatra, nor even the brave little Santa Maria of the great discoverer, ■would have a surer place in the world’s memory than the Pilgrim’s Mayflower. But if this comforting gift was withheld, or if sometimes it suffered eclipse when the wintry storms of the Atlantic buffeted their little craft, there must have been occasions when the resolute hearts of its company doubted whether it had not been better that she had never weighed anchor and never spread sail. And even when the voyage was ended and the little vessel rode at anchor on a rock- bound and snow-wrapped coast, how desolate she must have .'looked in the offing. And when those who had gone down to the sea in this little ship realized on that repellant shore that she was ' the only link between them and the fair world they had left be-* hind them, hot more did the sea gulls hover about the lonely craft than did the anxious fears of the exiled voyagers. And then the name of it! “The Mayflower!” There was that in this name, with its reminder of the -sweet English meadows in the loveliest of all the months, to break the exile’s heart on that lone, forbid- ding shore. Not strange, then, that the artist makes me a dreary and depressing little picture of the “Mayflower.” But why do I linger so long over that little ship? For really, though it is inseparably associated with the memories of the day we celebrate, it is not the Mayflower of my theme. That May- flower of the Pilgrims sailed the ocean in a high latitude of the north temperate zone. The other Mayflower of my thoughts burst into bloom in distant tropical seas. That Mayflower of our early history withered and perished two centuries and more ago. The Mayflower, with which my thoughts are busy at this moment, is still in gorgeous and expanding efflorescence. The wintry ocean, which Sore upon its bosom the earlier flower, and the seas at the equator, which witnessed the bud and bloom of the Mayflower 5 of today, are not more different, are not more separated in kind than the two flowers themselves. The Mayflower of 1620 has •wafted its subtle influence through nearly three centuries. The Mayflower, which burst into sudden and unexpected fiamboy- ancy in this present year of* grace, needed but a single night and day to send its strong exhalations across ten 'thousand miles of ocean, and to pervade a whole continent with its intoxicating fragrance. On the thirtieth day of April in 'the year of our Lord, 1898, the people of this country were feeling all the exaltation which takes possession of a people, rejoicing in their strength and conscious of a high purpose, at the prospect of war. Strange as it may ap- pear, still it seems to me to be true that a nation reaches its great- est spiritual heights as it prepares for war. This, if it be true — as I think it is — is true because the occasion calls into the fullest activity the noblest and the nearest divine of all human attributes — the spirit of self-sacrifice. At such times, in all the ramifications of society, this spirit is astir in the many forms which will occur to any one who stops to think of it. Whatever may be the mo- tives and design's of monarch's or statesmen or demagogues in launching a people in a war, however silly or sordid or wicked its instigators may be, 'the masses of the people themselves reach their highest levels, get farthest away from the petty, the mean, the selfish and the commercial in fesponding 'to- the trumpet call of die hour. In the hearts and spirits of the people, consciously or unconsciously, rules for the time this uplifting force of self- sacrifice. In the hearts of those who carry to the field their much, if they are to fight and live, their all, if they are to fight and die, and in the hearts and spirits of those ■ who are senders to the field of their best and dearest — yea, in the hearts of all the people, in greater or less degree, this spirit lives and moves. Added to the usual spiritual forces which exalt a people’s tone in such a crisis there was in this occasion a strong element of knight errantry. We had persuaded ourselves that we were going to war not for ourselves, not to extend our borders, not to acquire commer- cial advantage. In a prosaic and self-seeking age we had become 0 crusaders engaged in a holy war, not, it is true, to retrieve the Holy Sepulchre ft*>m the infidel, but the oppressed from the op- pressor. For 'this purpose we were to go beyond our doors, but ’ still well within our own hemisphere. Shores, which the straining eye could almost discern from our oWn shores, and the narrow sea between, traversable in the compass of the shortest summer night, were to mark the limits of our noble emprise. A single island of 'the Gulf, which washes our own coasts, not archipela- goes in the far-off seas of the Orient, filled our thoughts and bounded our aspirations. The night of April 30 of this year, Which now draws to a close, when this American people had fallen asleep, or sleeping or waking, were dreaming only the compara- tively sober dream I have mentioned, an American war fleet rose and fell to the gentle undulations of a tropical sea. On the first day of May that fleet had achieved a victory, which reads more like a tale from wonderland than a leaf from the annals of naval warfare. But, wonderful as was the victory itself, -it -seems com- monplace in -comparison with the immediate results. On that May day burst -into bloom the Mayflower of my story. Of all strange flowers this was the most wonderful. Every flow- er 'that springs from the bosom of earth is a Wonder and a mys- tery; -the most flaunting orchid of tropical forests not more .so than the lowly violet that scarce lifts its head from the graves of loved ones in -our own village church yards. We dwellers in a warm climate have nil a few Times made our visit in the spring evenings to some shrub -of the garden, revealing scarce percepti- ble buds, and have been greeted at early mo fin with a flood of bloom and fragrance, the transformation of a single vernal night. We have in every recurring year noted at eventide the oncom- ‘ ing of the springtime in the budding branch, and have looked out at dawn on the leafy tree. ITow many a summer morning have our senses been delighted by 'something which lived not in the evening air. It was, peradventure, the magnolia grandiflora on whose glorious flowers the witchery of the intervening night had wrought its wonderful work. Not -only has opulent nature these sweet greetings of the morn- 7 ing; she has also her delicious floral surprises for the night time, as when, like some court beauty, who spends the hours of garish day on her couch in dreamy languor behind silken curtains, re- serving the brilliant apparition of her charms for the hour of the ball and the banquet, our own night blooming cereus, close wrap- ped all day in its dainty russet mantle, awaits the shades of night to unfold its beauty and 'dispense its fragrance. Not only da we know nature’s magic in this part of her king- dom, but we have read of man’s strange counterfeit of her work in this same domain. We have read, and with our own ears we have heard from the lips of travellers, of the incomprehensible feat of the East Indian juggler. He will plant you a seed in the earth be- fore your very eyes. In a few minutes ‘the earth’s 'crust will stir and break. Then the first beginning of the plant rises above the ground, leaves burst forth, and it is a matter of minutes onlv be- fore a brilliant flower crowns the work of the* magician. Marvelous as are these familiar works of nature and this clever juggling of man, never yet in any anthology has there been gath- ered so wonderful a flower as my Mayflower of this year of grace. When I thus characterize it I am not thinking of the vic- tory itself in Manila bay or its glory, or its completeness or its blessed bloodlessness. I am thinking of . the sudden and marvelous outburst of a new idea, a new sentiment, a new aspiration of the American people . Where was there a man in all this broad land, from the chief magistrate to the humblest citizen, from the most thoughtful statesman to the most blatant jingo, who On the day of April 30 thought, or in the night of April .30 dreamed, of colonial posses- sion's in the Eastern Hemisphere? Up to the going down of the sun on that epochal day there was nothing more foreign to our policy and our tradition's, or further away from our thoughts. We laid us down and slept Americans for America; we awoke filled with imperial longings. Our armies 'were assembling up to that night only to leave our Southern shore to' carry food and freedom to starving and' oppressed Cuban's. We awoke to 'bend our energies equally for the gathering of fleets and armies on our western doast in order to possess ourselves of archipelagoes a third of the earth’s circumference from our doors, inhabited by people who 'starved not, and who 'desired not our coming. The whole spirit of our dream changed in a single night. Political iso- lation, the watchword of the Republic from its birth, was drowned in the new language of imperialism. Under 'the influence of this new spirit the emancipation of Cuba ceased to be the only pur- pose and aim of our armaments, and became a mere incident. And the poor reconcentrados — if they were ever w'oVth considera- tion — ceased to get it. In the vast expansion of our vision, and with our eyes uplifted to distant archipelagoes, they were simply overlooked — and perished long ago, unheeded and forgotten. I have said that the germination and the blooming of every flower, even tire lowliest, is a mystery. Who among us, even the wisest, can say more of the daisy, or the lily of ifhe valley, or any of the flowers, that border our pathway, than that they come in response to forces In which man has no part? And in this, my gorgeous Mayflower is like unto them. Who can detect the hand of man in fashioning it? Who can recall a single voice which, prior to that May morn, spoke of empire and the islands of the orient? What statesman or writer had broadcasted in the hearts and mi'nds of the American people die seed of this new aspiration, which, without preconcert, in a single day, burst into bloom in all parts of this broad land? If there w r as any such man name him. Rehearse to us the speech he has made; point us to the line he has written antedating the first day of our latest May. Indeed, in- deed, when was it ever given to any man to sweep with a new- thought in a single night through the hearts and minds of a whole nation, whose domain stretches from ocean to ocean and from Artie lands to tropical seas? Let us not be behind the old Romans in our recog- nition of forces other than man’s shaping the des- tinies of nations. When the army of Parthia and the army of Gaul, the legions on the Danube and the legions on the Tiber, as sometimes happened, without inter-communication, became actuated and moved at the same time by the same im- pulse, those old heathen had the one ready and the one only ex- planation, the “Numen!” It was the divinity, which, unlimited q in its operation by time and space, had, unseen, unheard and unfelt, laid its work in the minds and hearts of widely separated communities. This invisible, inaudible, imperceptible power is still at work. If I m-ay liken great things to small, the unseen to the visible, the spiritual to the material, I would say that it works as does some skilled electrician: invisible threads are skillfully -established, connecting with the source of light and ramifying into all parts o-f a great city. The work of preparation may be -slow; it may go on unobserved, but -once ready, it requires but the strength of a single finger to produce in a moment an outburst of light in all that city’s 'borders. This is not 'the time, the place or the occasion to mention any theme in such fashion as to provoke discussion, debate or con- troversy, but I remain within the limits Which I recognize when I express the trust that no one will 'successfully assail the evolu- tion of my Mayflower. Ah, me! When this portentous appari- tion of empire agitates some of us so horribly, we need some such theory as 1 have feebly set forth to calm our -perturbed spirits. In the prospect of an imperialism that embraces the death-dealing islands of the 'tropics, with their millions of untamed and untame- able inhabitants — an imperialism that beckons the choice of our manhood for many coming years 'to blood and pestilence — an imperialism which, in the light of mere human wisdom, is ap- parently in the humanitarian aspect so Quixotic, in the Chris- tianizing purpose so hopeless, in the business outlook so barren, in the fiscal view so oppressive, in every view so wild and fantas- tical — in the presence of such an apparition some of us can pre- serve our calmness -only by dwelling on such thoughts as I have endeavored to present. We are only saved from rage, as well as despair, by recalling the remarkable circumstances of the advent of this new aspiration, and by being able to note the absence therefrom of man’s machinations, and thus to calm ourselves, even in this -dreadful prospect o-f imperialism, while we say with humility, and not without ho-pe, "Deus regnat!”