How dull it is to pause, to make an end, Little remains: but every hour is saved Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. My mariners, Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with meThat ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honor and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Push off, and sitting well in order smite TENNYSON'S "ULYSSES." Ja! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben, Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben, Und so verbringt, umrungen von Gefahr, Hier Kindheit, Mann und Greis sein tüchtig Jahr. Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn. EXECUTIVE MANSION, ALBANY, N. Y., September, 1900. GOETHE'S "FAUST." THE STRENUOUS LIFE IN speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who preeminently and distinctly embody all that is most American in the American character, I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph. A life of slothful ease, a life of that peace which springs merely from lack either of desire or of power to strive after great things, is as little worthy of a nation as of an individual. I ask only that what every selfrespecting American demands from himself and from his sons shall be demanded of the American nation as a whole. Who among you would teach your boys that ease, that, 1 |