some of our best men sit with an awfully bad feeling at the pits of their stomachs, and the food taken fails to assimilate, and in the agitated digestive organs the lamb and the cow lie down together and get up just as they have a mind to. [Laughter.] After dinner I sat down with my friend to talk. He had for many years been troubled with indigestion. I felt guilty when I insisted on his taking that last piece of lemon pie. I knew that pastry always made him crusty. I said to him: "I never felt better in all my life; how do you feel?" And putting one hand over one piece of lemon pie and the other hand over the other piece of lemon pie, he said: "I feel miserable." Smaller varieties of food had the old Fathers, but it did them more good. Still, take it all in all, I think the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers are as good as their ancestors, and in many ways better. Children are apt to be an echo of their ancestors. We are apt to put a halo around the Forefathers, but I expect that at our age they were very much like ourselves. People are not wise when they long for the good old days. They say: "Just think of the pride of people at this day! Just look at the ladies' hats!" [Laughter.] Why, there is nothing in the ladies' hats of to-day equal to the coal-scuttle hats a hundred years ago. They say: "Just look at the way people dress their hair!" Why, the extremest style of to-day will not equal the top-knots which our great-grandmothers wore, put up with high combs that we should think would have made our great-grandfathers die with laughter. The hair was lifted into a pyramid a foot high. On the top of that tower lay a white rose. Shoes of bespangled white kid, and heels two or three inches high. Grandfather went out to meet her on the floor with a coat of sky-blue silk, and vest of white satin, embroidered with gold lace, lace ruffles around his wrist, and his hair flung in a queue. The great George Washington had his horse's hoofs blackened when about to appear on a parade, and writes to Europe, ordering sent for the use of himself and family, one silver-lace hat, one pair of silver shoe-buckles, a coat made of fashionable silk, one pair of gold sleeve-buttons, six pairs of kid gloves, one dozen most fashionable cambric pocket-handkerchiefs, besides ruffles and tucker. That was George. [Laughter.] Talk about dissipations, ye who have ever seen the oldfashioned sideboard! Did I not have an old relative who always, when visitors came, used to go upstairs and take a drink, through economical habits, not offering anything to his visitors? [Laughter.] On the old-fashioned training days the most sober men were apt to take a day to themselves. Many of the familiar drinks of to-day were unknown to them, but their hard cider, mint julep, metheglin, hot toddy, and lemonade in which the lemon was not at all prominent, sometimes made lively work for the broadbrimmed hats and silver knee-buckles. Talk of dissipating parties of to-day and keeping of late hours! Why, did they not have their "bees" and sausage-stuffings and tea-parties and dances, that for heartiness and uproar utterly eclipsed all the waltzes, lanciers, redowas, and breakdowns of the nineteenth century, and they never went home till morning. As to the old-time courtships, oh, my! Washington Irving describes them. [Laughter.] But tho your Forefathers may not have been much, if any, better than yourselves, let us extol them for the fact that they started this country in the right direction. They laid the foundation for American manhood. The foundation must be more solid and firm and unyielding than any other part of the structure. On that Puritanic foundation we can safely build all nationalities. [Applause.] Let us remember that the coming American is to be an admixture of all foreign bloods. In about twenty-five or fifty years the model American will step forth. He will have the strong brain of the German, the polished manners of the French, the artistic taste of the Italian, the stanch heart of the English, the steadiest piety of the Scotch, the lightning wit of the Irish, and when he steps forth, bone, muscle, nerve, brain entwined with the fibers of all nationalities, the nations will break out in the cry: "Behold the American!" [Applause.] Columbus discovered only the shell of this country. Agas siz came and discovered fossiliferous America. Silliman came and discovered geological America. Audubon came and discovered bird America. Longfellow came and discovered poetic America; and there are a half-dozen other Americas yet to be discovered. I never realized what this country was and is, as on the day when I first saw some of these gentlemen of the army and navy. It was when, at the close of the war, our armies came back and marched in review before the President's stand at Washington. I do not care whether a man was a Republican or a Democrat, a Northern man or a Southern man, if he had any emotion of nature, he could not look upon it without weeping. God knew that the day was stupendous, and He declared the heaven of cloud and mist and chill, and sprung the blue sky as the triumphal arch for the returning warriors to pass under. From Arlington Heights the spring foliage shook out its welcome, as the hosts came over the hills, and the sparkling waters of the Potomac tossed their gold to the feet of the battalions as they came to the Long Bridge, and in almost interminable line passed over. The Capitol never seemed so majestic as that morning: snowy white, looking down upon the tides of men that came surging down, billow after billow. Passing in silence, yet I heard in every step the thunder of conflicts through which they had waded, and seemed to see dripping from their smoke-blackened flags the blood of our country's martyrs. For the best part of two days we stood and watched the filing on of what seemed endless battalions, brigade after brigade, division after division, host after host, rank beyond rank; ever moving, ever passing; marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp-thousands after thousands, battery front, arms shouldered, columns solid, shoulder to shoulder, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril. Commanders on horses with their manes entwined with roses, and necks enchained with garlands, fractious at the shouts that ran along the line, increasing from the clapping of children clothed in white, standing on the steps of the Capitol, to the tumultuous vociferation of hundreds of thousands of enraptured multitudes, crying "Huzza! Huzza!" Gleaming muskets, thundering parks of artillery, rumbling pontoon wagons, ambulances from whose wheels seemed to sound out the groans of the crusht and the dying that they had carried. These men came from balmy Minnesota, those from Illinois prairies. These were often hummed to sleep by the pines of Oregon, those were New England lumbermen. Those came out of the coalshafts of Pennsylvania. Side by side in one great cause, consecrated through fire and storm and darkness, brothers in peril, on their way home from Chancellorsville and Kenesaw Mountain and Fredericksburg, in lines that seemed infinite they passed on. We gazed and wept and wondered, lifting up our heads to see if the end had come, but no! Looking from one end of that long avenue to the other, we saw them yet in solid column, battery front, host beyond host, wheel to wheel, charger to charger, nostril to nostril, coming as it were from under the Capitol. Forward! Forward! Their bayonets, caught in the sun, glimmered and flashed and blazed, till they seemed like one long river of silver, ever and anon changed into a river of fire. No end to the procession, no rest for the eye. We turned our heads from the scene, unable longer to look. We felt disposed to stop our ears, but still we heard it, marching, marching; tramp, tramp, tramp. But hush-uncover every head! Here they pass, the remnant of ten men of a full regiment. Silence! Widowhood and orphanage look on and wring their hands. But wheel into line, all ye people! North, South, East, West-all decades, all centuries, all millenniums! Forward, the whole line! Huzza! Huzza! [Great applause.] |