^- 
 
Glass ___£_6 
 
 Rnnk -Jl^JMr^^ 
 
JUL 9 1910 ^ 
 
 5PLLCH 
 
 OF 
 
 Senator Chauncey M. Depew 
 
 AT THL 
 
 NINLTLLNTH ANNUAL DINNER 
 
 GIVEN BY THL 
 
 MoNTAUK Club of Brooklyn 
 
 In Celebration of His Birthday 
 on April 23, 1910 
 
f'w 
 
 
||7 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 i! 
 
 ^'^ 
 
 '^% ' -' 
 
 
 
 r ^^ 
 
 
 
 / 
 
 ,f•.^ 
 
 \^ , •* 
 
 
 i 
 
 ^ 1 
 
 f ' ■", . 
 
 
 , -c 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 ■^^^^y' 
 
 % 
 
 ■\ 
 
 ♦ 
 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 il})^-. ^ 
 
 
 
 > , 
 
 
 "^^^^si^ 
 
 
 1 
 
 My 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■< 
 
 ( 
 
 
 ^> / 
 
 mmmt^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■\ 
 
 V 
 
 
 \ 1 
 
 1 
 
 ■L. 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 t. 
 
 
 1' • 
 
 
 
 
 
 , 
 
 t ^ 
 
 )^,<-J*,^ --^ 
 
 k 
 
 
 
 
 
 f 
 
 f. -^y?5iii||^ 
 
 Hlft 
 
 te. 
 
 
 
 
 
 i 
 
 > 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 fe 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 .'I^^H 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 Ei,^ ' 
 
 
 
 • 
 
 ■,i. ,-...■v,^.^-^A^.vi.. ,.^1.- J.. 
 
 A.W^ 
 

 Speech of Senator Chauncey M. Depew at the ^. 
 
 Nineteenth Annual Dinner Given by the "^ 
 
 Montauk Club of Brooklyn, in 
 Celebration of His Birthday, 
 on April 23, 1910. 
 
 Mr. President and Gentlemen : 
 
 No language can express fittingly my pleasure at the 
 renewal of your greeting. For nearly two decades 
 you have gathered annually in honor of my birthday. Mem- 
 bers of all political parties, and all religious faiths, men in 
 the professions, in business, in journalism, in literature, in 
 the multifarious activities and antagonisms of American 
 life, lay their differences aside for this festive night, as they 
 have done during all these years. This holding in abeyance 
 and suspension the antagonisms which divide men upon 
 many lines is only ordinarily possible at a funeral. Even 
 in that case, some go as far as did the late Judge Hoar 
 who detested Wendell Phillips, and when requested by the 
 family to be a pallbearer sent back word declining, but with 
 the remark, "I approve of the proceedings." It is a refuta- 
 tion of the universal charge against us that we are so 
 absorbed in materialism that we have lost all faculty for 
 the healthy enjoyment of association and that attrition of 
 minds without rancor which promotes truth and longevity, 
 for tonight, whatever we were yesterday or will be to- 
 morrow, is devoted whole-heartedly and unselfishly to com- 
 radeship and good-fellowship. 
 
Thankful for Life and Blessings. 
 
 At seventy-six tlie world ought to seem no different on 
 its spiritual, its ethical, and its human side than it did at 
 forty-six. A statesman and politician who had won many 
 distinctions and been blessed with a multitude of devoted 
 followers closed his career and his life with the pathetic 
 inquiry, "What does it all amount to?" If I should attempt 
 to estimate what the world had all amounted to for me 
 from the day I entered Peekskill Academy at ten years of 
 age until this hour, volumes would not suffice, and, there- 
 fore, I sum it all up in this, "For a long life, abounding in 
 good things, in a capacity for enjoying everything, in recip- 
 rocal attachments and contributions with multitudes of men 
 and women, in more than my share of health and of 
 happiness, I reverently thank God both that I am alive and 
 that I have lived." 
 
 I read an account the other day of a Russian, named 
 Ivan Kusman, who was admitted to the hospital in St. 
 Petersburg at the age of 138. He remembered Napoleon's 
 burning of Moscow and the few incidents that occur in the 
 career of a Russian peasant. He was an agricultural la- 
 borer for a mere pittance during this whole period, and 
 could neither read nor write. That is not an experience 
 to be envied. It enforces Tennyson's lines, "Better fifty 
 years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay." But, on the con- 
 trary, when you think of Auber composing his best operas 
 at 89 and Manual Garcia still an instructor in vocal culture 
 at 100, and Whittier singing immortal songs at 85, you 
 are in contact with men who have lived and who know "what 
 it all amounts to." 
 
 Some Ancient Rules of Health. 
 
 There is an eastern maxim that every man at forty is 
 either a fool or a physician. It is eminently true. That 
 old Italian, Carnaro, who found all of his associates in 
 Venice dying at forty, made up his mind that these tragedies 
 
^vel■e due to excesses. He had the strength of will to adopt 
 a very severe but frugal regimen both in eating and drink- 
 ing. At 80 he published his experiences for the benefit of 
 those who were still dying or likely to die at 40. At 90 and 
 at 100 he repeated the publication and enforced the lesson 
 of the happiness which had come to him with health and 
 longevity, declaring the same might be shared by every man. 
 His plan was very simple. He selected out of the many 
 things he liked a few for his table, masticated thoroughly, 
 long before Fletcherism was known, and limited the quantity 
 by measurement upon the scales to half what he had usually 
 ■devoured, reduced his wine to the minimum, and at that 
 time tobacco had not been discovered. 
 
 Moderation and Activity. 
 
 Fifty-four years in public and semi-public life and upon 
 the platform all over this country and in Europe for all 
 sorts of objects in every department of human interest have 
 given me a larger acquaintance than almost anybody living. 
 The sum of observation and experience growing out of this 
 opportunity is that granted normal conditions, no hereditary 
 troubles, and barring accidents and plagues, the man who 
 •dies before seventy commits suicide. Mourning the loss of 
 friends has led me to study the causes of their earlier 
 departure. It could invariably be traced to intemperance 
 in the broadest sense of that word ; intemperance in eating, 
 in drinking, in the gratification of desires, in work and in 
 irregularity of hours, crowning it all with unnecessary 
 worry. Pythagoras said, "Beware of ballots if you wish 
 to live long." In other words, the old philosopher advised 
 keeping out of politics. In his time the defeated party ran 
 the risk of death, or imprisonment, or exile, and so the 
 advice was good, "Beware of ballots." But, in our country 
 where the citizen is a sovereign and responsible for the gov- 
 ernment of his country, his state, his city, his village or 
 his town, an active interest in public affairs and party 
 
management gives healthy circulation to the blood, healthy 
 exercise and activity to the muscles, and inspiration and 
 enlargement to the mind, and satisfaction in results which 
 all tend to length of years and usefulness. 
 
 The Great Year of 1834. 
 
 The year of my birth, 1834, seems a long way off on the 
 calendar but mightv short in the retrospect. The Roman 
 Emperor Hadrian spent the revenues of an empire upon 
 astrologers who should forecast his future from the con- 
 junction of the stars at his birth. If you are so inclined, 
 you can have that work done now for fifty cents. But, 
 suppose we leave the stars to the astronomer and come 
 down to earth. In 1834 Cardinal Gibbons, Doctor Eliot 
 of Harvard, President Benjamin Harrison, Justice Harlan 
 of the Supreme Court, Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll, and 
 Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet, also fell under the 
 influence of the powers of Heaven and earth which started 
 them on their careers. Every year has its distinction, but 
 this one seems to have brought forth more than most others 
 of the things which have influenced the world. In it were 
 organized the first National Temperance Association and the 
 first National Anti-Slavery Society. 
 
 Temperance and Anti-Slavery Movements. 
 
 The idea of temperance at that time was purely volun- 
 tary. Statutory restrictions had not been dreamed of. 
 At that time and for twenty years afterward drunkenness 
 was our national vice. At a large dinner like this a con- 
 siderable portion of the guests would always be hopelessly 
 gone, and at private dinners of fourteen, sixteen or twenty 
 it was common for several of the guests to be disgracefully 
 drunk. This never occurs now, either at public or private 
 entertainments, no matter how free the wine. 
 
 The purport of the anti-slavery movement was perfectly 
 understood by the slaveholders and their sympathizers. 
 
 6 
 
Meetings in New York and in Philadelphia were broken up 
 by riots which sometimes lasted for days and in which many 
 were injured and large amounts of property destroyed. In 
 Connecticut a mob with a brass band interrupted a lecturer 
 for the abolition of slavery and drove him out of Norwich 
 to the tune of "The Rogues' March." The legislatures of 
 the Southern States called upon the Northern States to 
 prohibit the printing of anti-slavery publications and did 
 prohibit their circulation in their commonwealths. Presi- 
 dent Jackson sent a message to Congress recommending the 
 passage of an act for the suppression of anti-slavery 
 literature. 
 
 The agitation begun by the formation of the National 
 Anti-Slavery Society in 1834 continued with increasing vol- 
 ume and vehemence. The society preached the horrors of 
 slavery and then on the patriotic side a sentiment that the 
 Declaration of Independence should be true in spirit as well 
 as in letter. After thirty years, at the cost of a million 
 lives, and, directly and indirectly, of ten thousand millions 
 of dollars, and up to date three thousand millions in pen- 
 sions, slavery was abolished and the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence made true in our country both in letter and spirit. 
 
 In that year occurred the first record of a beat in journal- 
 ism which has become the life of the press. The Journal of 
 Commerce established relays of horses between New York 
 and Philadelphia and secured the news of the White House 
 and of Congress a day earlier than the other New York 
 papers. 
 
 There was great intellectual activity in the coun- 
 try resulting in breaking away from the old universities. 
 A liberal education was thought impossible except at Yale, 
 or Harvard, or Columbia, or Princeton, but in that year 
 there were twelve colleges founded in different parts of the 
 country, all of which are now successful and have done 
 magnificent work in higher education. 
 
JArKsox's Civil Service and Banking Policies. 
 
 Andrew Jackson was President of the United States 
 and William L. Alarcy Governor of the State of New 
 York. The President gave his approval to the party 
 platform, "That political workers are to be rewarded 
 with political offices, and political parties are to be held 
 together by the cohesive power of public plunder." 
 That doctrine controlled the civil service of the United 
 States without check or hindrance for over fifty years. 
 In that year the United States national debt was paid 
 off and the country started with a clean slate. In that 
 year General Jackson gave his famous order for the 
 removal of Government deposits from the banks. This was 
 the beginning of an agitation which threw our financial 
 system into chaos. It made impossible currency upon a 
 scientific basis, and was the fruitful mother of the country- 
 wide and disastrous panics which have so often shaken our 
 financial and industrial stability. The most delicate, diffi- 
 cult and dangerous of all the functions of government, the 
 one upon whose proper creation and administration rests the 
 whole fabric of national and individual credit, the one 
 which should be adjusted and settled by the lessons of the 
 experience of highly organized governments for hundreds 
 of years, has from that time to this been the sport of party 
 warfare, political passion and partisanship. The dead 
 hand of that great, strong man still holds our financial 
 system by the throat. 
 
 Increase of Presidential Power. 
 
 Our institutions and political policy came from England 
 and were so modified by our ancestors as to meet conditions 
 under a republican form of government and the expansive 
 necessities of the new country. All power in the mother 
 land was originally in the throne. By succeeding revolu- 
 tions, the people gained more and more power until now 
 they have it all, and in many respects Great Britain in its 
 
government is the most democratic of all countries. On 
 the other hand, we began with a distrust of executive power 
 and authority and our evolution has been the other way. 
 Our first confederacy was a rope of sand. In our govern- 
 ment under the Constitution we protected ourselves against 
 the executive by a clear definition of his powers, by the 
 right to override his veto by Congress, by the veto upon 
 him from the Supreme Court and the power of impeach- 
 ment. Our early Presidents who had taken part in the 
 formation of the government were in thorough harmony 
 with these limitations upon the President, and with the 
 apprehension of kingly authority which had brought them 
 about. With Jackson a new generation came into the 
 government, a generation removed from the experiences 
 and opinions of the revolution. The leader of this genera- 
 tion was one of the strongest, most self-centered, autocratic 
 and arbitrary of men who have ever appeared in our public 
 life. He not only defied Congress and the courts, but won 
 the applause of the people and changed public opinion as to 
 the powers and duties of the President. From his time 
 until now there has been not only in the Central Govern- 
 ment, but in the States, a growing distrust of the repre- 
 sentatives of the people in Congress and in the legislatures 
 and an increasing confidence in Presidents and Governors. 
 The literature of our magazines and of a large portion of 
 the press casts doubt upon and arouses suspicion of the 
 actions and the methods of successive Congresses and legis- 
 latures and appeals to the President or the Governors to 
 control and lead them. The writers put their faith in the 
 executive and justify everything that he may do on the 
 ground that the only safety of the people is in the strength, 
 integrity and courage of the executive against their be- 
 trayal by their representatives. 
 
Congressional Conditions Improved. 
 
 And yet, any competent man who will conscientiously 
 and impartially study the question come come to the con- 
 clusion that the conditions of our National Congress are 
 today infinitely better than ever before. There is no lobby 
 at Washington. There are no interests there seeking to 
 influence Senators and Members. For the times in which 
 we live, for the varied necessities of our Government, for 
 the legislation so much more difficult than it was in earlier 
 days, both Houses of Congress in ability and patriotism 
 will stand favorable comparison with what are called the 
 great days of Webster, Clay and Calhoun. With Grant 
 began the system of not only recommending legislation to 
 Congress but transmitting bills prepared to carry that legis- 
 lation into effect, and this by evolution has become the 
 common practice. 
 
 In 1834 Abraham Lincoln was elected to the legislature 
 of Illinois and began his extraordinary public career. 
 
 In 1834 Chicago received one mail a week, carried on 
 horseback from Niles, Michigan, and in 1834 the Whig 
 party was formed out of the disruption of the old Federal 
 organization and Democrats who were anti-slavery and be- 
 lieved in a liberal construction of the Constitution. 
 
 Railroad Development. 
 
 We can go back to this period for the beginning of the 
 extraordinary change which has taken place in our business 
 methods and social life. A railroad was built from Jersey 
 City to New Brunswick and i)rojected on to Trenton. A 
 start was made on the Erie Road. The Harlem, which 
 extended through the fields from the present site of the 
 City Hall in New York to the end of Manhattan Island, 
 crossed the Harlem River. In other words, from small be- 
 ginnings of a few miles for local traffic the expansion which 
 began in 1834 has in 76 years covered the country with 234,- 
 OOO miles of railway mileage and developed new territories 
 
 10 
 
-with a speed unknown in the history of immigration and 
 ■settlement. It has transformed our land from isolated com- 
 munities in which individual initiative and enterprise sup- 
 plied nearly all the manufactures which they required into 
 great centers of industries where mills and factories with 
 enormous capital can, because of cheap transportation, get 
 their raw material from great distances and give universal 
 distribution to the manufactured product and place their out- 
 put upon the market at a cost so low as to make competi- 
 tion by the individual impossible. More and more the 
 United States because of cheaper cost is bringing into every 
 department of human industry greater capital and larger 
 employment. It has produced, on the one hand, the gigan- 
 tic corporation, and on the other, in self-defense, the labor 
 unions. 
 
 Government Control. 
 
 The problems growing out of this development are 
 the ones which this generation faces and of which the 
 preceding ones were ignorant. There can be no reasonable 
 doubt that the proper method of dealing with these great 
 questions is not by government ownership but government 
 control. Corporations are to grow larger and combina- 
 tions stronger. It is the inevitable tendency of the times. 
 The safety of the people is to be in having the hand of 
 the government, through responsible commissions and 
 courts, upon every process of organization and operation, in 
 frequent reports and publicity, in the press constantly in- 
 forming the people and in the President and Congress, gov- 
 ernors and the legislatures, being in constant and enlightened 
 touch with the situation. It is thus that we can promote 
 beneficent expansion, give opportunity for individual initia- 
 tive and prevent monopolistic control. 
 
 11 
 
Cost of Living Then and Now. 
 
 Just now tliere is both suffering and alarm because of high 
 prices. I have not much sympathy with those who say that 
 this condition is due to national extravagance. There was tre" 
 mendous complaint of high prices in 1835. There is on file 
 in the Treasury Department a copybook of the expenses of 
 a clerk who wanted an increase of salary because of the 
 unusually high cost of living. His family consisted of five 
 persons and his food for the year cost him $338.10. The 
 Bureau of Labor of the Government estimated last year 
 that the food for a similar family now would be $312.92. 
 This clerk says that his boots cost him $3.75, his cotton 
 sheeting ten cents a yard (both now are about the same), 
 his lamp oil one dollar a gallon (now ten cents), blacking 
 of shoes twenty-five cents a shine (now five cents), flour 
 eight dollars a barrel (now seven), transportation for him- 
 self and wife from Washington to Martinsburg, Virginia, 
 and return $32.03 (now $8.02), Martinsburg being 77 
 miles from Washington; an ordinary cooking stove $49 
 (now about $16.50), and a firkin of butter $10.22 
 (now about $21.50). Extravagance is a relative, not a 
 positive, condition. Nobody would live now as the whole 
 country did in 1834 and 1835. Both men and women of 
 that period were largely the manufacturers of their own 
 clothes in their own houses. They cultivated their own 
 little gardens without help. If they kept a horse, as many 
 of them did, the care of the animal, the mending of the 
 harness and the painting and repairing of the wagon were 
 all done by the head of the family. The wife made the 
 chil(h-en's clothes, and ran the house and a kindergarten. 
 
 12 
 
Frugal Alien Saves. 
 
 The laborer who comes here from abroad and continues, as- 
 he will for a time, to live as he did at home, finds, that upon 
 our wages, he is saving money rapidly and accumulating: 
 according to his ideas, a comfortable fortune. In fact, 
 many, retaining their habits of living which they brought 
 with them, go back in a few years to lives of ease on little 
 places upon the Continent. That sort of thing is carrying 
 out of the United States a hundred million of dollars a 
 year, but those who remain to become citizens, and those whO' 
 are born here and are citizens, desire to live as an American 
 artisan should and will live, in housing, clothing, food, 
 educational opportunities for the children and surplus for 
 travels, books and pleasure, which make the glory of Amer- 
 ican citizenship. By our system of protection we have 
 made it possible for the American workingman to receive 
 wages in many cases double and in all cases much larger 
 than in other countries. But we have not as yet protected 
 ^him against competition by immigrants who will work for 
 what he cannot afford to work for and live as he will not 
 and should not be asked to do. 
 
 Larger Rights for Women. . 
 
 The most beneficent of the changes which have occurred 
 during my time have been the laws granting rights to 
 women. In my earlier days a woman's property was her hus- 
 band's, his debts were hers, and it was not until 1848 that 
 she could have her independent possessions or safety in any 
 business she might undertake. It was still later that she 
 was accorded the privilege of a higher education and her 
 intellectual necessities as well as ability considered to be 
 fully equal to man's. As I used to travel through the coun- 
 try on railway inspection trips, I noticed at every station 
 a crowd of idlers. They knew the names of the trains, 
 of the conductors and the engineers, and were eager to tell 
 the waitino- traveler whether No. 2 was late or the Empire 
 
 13 
 
State Express on time. I noticed that they disappeared at 
 noon and at about six. Upon inquiry I found that they were 
 -supported by their wives. These capable, hard-working, en- 
 -ergetic women were dressmakers or milHners or kept Httle 
 ■stores, and their worthless husbands hung around the depot 
 iDecause they had no other means of passing away time 
 unless the circus was in town or elections in progress, and 
 turned up invariably for meals which had been earned by 
 the wife. This experience has done more than all things 
 ■else to bring me toward woman suffrage, for in all these 
 -cases she is assuredly the better half. 
 
 People are all influenced largely by their point of view 
 rather than the merits of the question. When Captain 
 Schmittberger in New York arrested a sleep-walker, the 
 -man said, "Hold on, you must not arrest me. I am a som- 
 nambulist." "I don't care a cuss what your religion is," 
 said the Captain ; "you can't walk the street in my precinct 
 in your night-shirt." 
 
 The Bad News Teller. 
 
 Any one who has had the opportunity to watch closely 
 for half a century the psychological development of people 
 finds many interesting results. The vast majority are 
 neighborly, generous, sympathetic and kindly. In the evo- 
 lution of influences the other sort sometimes take the lead. 
 The man who inquires about your health with a suggestion 
 that you are in a decline, who sympathetically wants to 
 know why your wife or daughter or son was not at church 
 last Sunday, with an intimation that he considers his or 
 her condition rather serious, who hastens to drop every- 
 thing to convey to you some bad news is common in every 
 community. If some provincial journal which you are 
 never likely to see, has a mean article about you this candid 
 friend buys two copies, puts them in sealed envelopes, with 
 two-cent stamps attached, so that you will be sure to open 
 them, and mails one to your wife and one to yourself. I 
 
 14 ' 
 
wonder what this person, who fears or is ashamed to give 
 his name or address, gets in return for this investment of 
 four cents. He may gloat over imaginary suffering as 
 worth that expenditure, but can never be sure that his bolt 
 hits the mark. He is a Wind speculator in malice and' 
 meanness. 
 
 Coming from a long railway journey I landed in the 
 Grand Central Depot one morning between four and five 
 o'clock. A man stepped up to me and said in regard to a 
 very dear and valued friend: "Have you heard about 
 Jim?" I said. "No. What?" He hit me a whack in the back 
 that sent me off the platform on to the rails and shouted, 
 ".He is dead. My God! he is dead." When I recovered 
 sufficiently, I said, "How came you to be here at this early 
 hour?" The answer was, "The family sent me to meet you- 
 and break the news gently." 
 
 Wanted, Scandal. 
 
 "There is a singular prevalence, temporary I am sure, 
 of this sentiment just now. A well-known writer, whose 
 contributions are very acceptable to the magazines, told me 
 that he thought there had been quite enough of misrepre- 
 sentation and unfair criticism of President Taft and his 
 administration, and so he wrote some articles stating the 
 conclusions which he had arrived at, and the reasons for 
 them, which were favorable to the President. His employ- 
 ers, the publishers, said, "Our readers don't want that. If 
 you have any scandal about any public man or about Con- 
 gress with enough truth to make it, when properly pre- 
 sented, seem to be very bad and, therefore, sensational, that 
 suits our readers and increases our circulation." 
 
 I heard a story from a journalistic friend who publishes 
 a broad and liberal paper, that the proprietor of one of 
 the newspapers who makes this view of measures and men 
 a specialty, having been absent for some time, turned up' 
 in the editorial rooms and called the staff about him and^ 
 
 15 
 
■Avanted to know if they had been off on a vacation. 
 "Why?" said the astonished manager and editor. "Be- 
 cause," said the boss, "I have not seen anything which flays 
 or dissects anybody for a week." "But," said the manager, 
 "no one of any account has said or done anything for a 
 week." "\\'ell," said the boss, "we have got to keep up 
 •our reputation or lose our circulation. Take the hide off 
 Bishop Potter." 
 
 Cycles in the Demand for Literature. 
 
 The boys of my period were inspired as no other genera- 
 tion has been by books by the Waverley novels. If the 
 ground was susceptible, they created statesmen, soldiers and 
 poets, and aroused ambitions in receptive minds to be fol- 
 lowed by the best efforts of which they were capable. It 
 was a liberal education to read Dickens' novels as they came 
 ■out one after another, the enjoyment in the last and the 
 eager expectancy of the next were sensations never for- 
 gotten. Dickens' intimate picture of the life of the 
 ordinary home, its joys, its sorrows, its comedies and 
 tragedies touched every heart and broadened every 
 mind. So, when Thackeray's novels began to appear, their 
 exquisite literature, their superb English, their masterly 
 dissection of human motives and springs of action 
 gave exquisite pleasure and created a generation of 
 "brilliant thinkers and great writers. Two years ago 
 while in Europe I was at one of the big hotels at 
 a watering place on the Continent. The table of the read- 
 ing room was strewn with cheap editions which the visitors 
 had read and left behind. I never dreamed that so much 
 eroticism, nastincss and brutal depravity could be printed 
 and sold by reputable booksellers. But a popular writer 
 told me that the publishers claimed this was the public 
 taste and it demanded novels whose basic action should be 
 domestic infelicities brought about by faithless wives and 
 husbands and immoral adventuresses, and that no detail 
 should be omitted which would give spice to the narrative. 
 
 IB 
 
This sort of thing can be done in a French novel so as to 
 ■seem a work of art, but in English it becomes the quintes- 
 sence of badness and vulgarity. In the course of a half 
 century I have noticed these cycles. It is difficult to decide 
 whether they are protests against Puritanism or a certain 
 and sudden eagerness to show that contact with the worst 
 is not injurious. Happily, this deluge of filth did not 
 sweep over our country and the reaction in Europe is lead- 
 ing to happy results. Serious books by eminent men upon 
 live topics and with lofty ends are becoming popular, and 
 the wings of genius, scoured of mud, are working to lift 
 the novel, which is the companion and preacher of our 
 daily life, into the air which was breathed by Walter Scott, 
 Dickens, Thackeray and Kingsley. 
 
 Unhappy is the man who is not so much dissatisfied with 
 what he has as with what the other fellow possesses. Happy 
 is the man who, looking over his life, its associations, its 
 incidents and accidents, its friendships and its enmities, 
 would not exchange with anyone, living or dead. A suc- 
 cessful politician who incurred a great deal of abuse used 
 to comfort himself by saying of his critic, "That man will 
 •die and go to hell." He always came into my office imme- 
 ■diately after one of his enemies had departed and would 
 .simply remark, "He is there." The result of this gentleman's 
 view of those who disagreed with him led to a general ex- 
 ■clamation when he died himself, "Well, he is there." 
 
 Trained Mind.s. Not Luck. 
 
 Galileo, being one day in the cathedral at Pisa, watched 
 the oscillations of a lamp suspended from the ceiling. He 
 ■observed that the vibrations were performed in equal time, 
 and from that he invented the clock and the machinery 
 whose accuracy created modern astronomy. But people 
 had been watching the swinging of that lamp for hundreds 
 of years and saw nothing in it. Its lesson came 
 to Galileo because he was the most eminent of 
 
 17 
 
the trained scientists of his time. James Hargreaves 
 lived by spinning and weaving, his wife and chil- 
 dren helping him. He was always experimenting and 
 all his experiments were failures. One day the youngest 
 member of the family, toddling over the floor, fell against 
 the spinning wheel while it was working and upset it. 
 Hargreaves noticed that while he retained the thread in his 
 hand the wheel continued to revolve horizontally for a 
 time, giving a vertical rotation to the spindle. That sug- 
 gested the sphming-jenny, which, by giving England the 
 command for so long a time of the cotton industry, made 
 her one of the greatest manufacturing countries in the 
 world. The lazy man says, "What a lucky accident," but 
 Hargreaves had been trying for twenty years to discover 
 this secret. Hundreds of weaving machines had been upset 
 in the meantime, but it was the training, experience 
 and genius of the observer which brought about this result. 
 Charles Goodyear spent the best part of his life trying to 
 produce vulcanized india-rubber. Angry at his failures, he 
 flung a piece of rubber upon a hot stove, to find after- 
 ward that the problem was solved. Rubber had been burned 
 in one form or another ever since it was discovered, but 
 it was the mind intent for so long upon the one purpose 
 which saw in the accident the realization of his hopes. So, 
 my friends, the longer we live the more firmly we are con- 
 vinced that it is only training and work which win. A peo- 
 ple have recently been discovered in one of the islands in 
 the Bay of Bengal who wear no clothes, for in that climate 
 they need none, who do not have to work for food because 
 it grows in superabundance upon the trees, while a little 
 exertion gathers fish from the stream or game from the 
 forest. Under these conditions of absolute indolence and 
 no necessity for exertion their average age is twenty-six 
 years, while the hardy peasants of the Balkan Mountains, 
 who, with the greatest difficulty, can scratch enough for 
 existence out of the inhospitable soil, are the longest lived 
 races in the world. 
 
 18 
 
Roosevelt. 
 
 It is a glorious thing for any people to have thrills 
 of enthusiasm. I think all of us, no matter what 
 our views of him may be, no matter how much we 
 differ with him in opinion, no matter how much he may 
 have antagonized some of us by his actions, feel prouder 
 of the product of American liberty and opportunity because 
 the eye of the world is just now filled, to the exclusion of 
 all other men, by the virile figure of Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 Christian Unity. 
 
 In closing this seventy-sixth anniversary there rises out 
 of the past this fact of hope and aspiration. During all my 
 earlier years I sat under the preaching of a learned 
 preacher of the old school Presbyterian Church. His 
 most fervid sermons were on Christmas and Easter. 
 He claimed that there was no historical authority for these 
 dates, and denounced them, to use his own language, as 
 "Popish superstitions." Liberalism or modernism, or rather 
 Christian charity, has softened the antagonisms and low- 
 ered the barriers between churches and creeds. In these days 
 of Christian unity in faith with liberty in forms, around 
 every altar on Christmas are evergreens and on Easter 
 flowers. The question of dates becomes insignificant com- 
 pared with the tremendous consequences to humanity from 
 the Birth and Resurrection, and all can now unite in a 
 common celebration of these festivals. It is a long step to- 
 ward the peace of the world, the Fatherhood of God and 
 the brotherhood of man. 
 
 19