How dull it is to pause, to make an end, ... My mariners, with me Push off, and sitting well in order smite -Tennyson's “Ulysses." Ja! diesem Sinne bin ich ganz ergeben, -GOETHE'S “FAC'ST." EXECUTIVE Mansion, ALBANY, N. Y. September, 1900. CONTENTS THE STRENUOUS LIFE . . . . . . . 3 EXPANSION AND PEACE . . . . . . . 23 LATITUDE AND LONGITUDE AMONG REFORMERS . . FELLOW-FEELING AS A POLITICAL FACTOR . . . Civic HELPFULNESS. . . . . . . . CHARACTER AND SUCCESS . . . . . . . . 98 THE EIGHTH AND NINTH COMMANDMENTS IN POLITICS 107 THE BEST AND THE GOOD . . . . . . PROMISE AND PERFORMANCE . . . . . . . THE AMERICAN Boy . . . . . . . . MILITARY PREPAREDNESS AND UNPREPAREDNESS, BROTHERHOOD AND THE HEROIC VIRTUES . . 215 THE STRENUOUS LIFE SPEECH BEFORE THE HAMILTON CLUB, CHICAGO, APRIL 10, 1899 IN speaking to you, men of the greatest city of the I West, men of the State which gave to the country Lincoln and Grant, men who pre-eminently 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 self-respecting 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 peace, is to be |