54 PATRIOTISM OF NEW YORK CITY. THE PATRIOTISM OF NEW YORK CITY. RICHARD 8. STORRS, D.D. I scout the thought that we, as a people, are worse than our fathers! John Adams, at the head of the War Department in 1776, wrote bitter laments on the corruption which existed in even that infant age of the Republic, and of the spirit of venality, rapacious and insatiable, which was then the most alarming enemy of America. He declared himself ashamed of the age he lived in! In Jefferson's day all Federalists expected the universal dominion of French infidelity. In Jackson's day all Whigs thought the country gone to ruin already, as if Mr. Biddle had had the entire public hope locked up in the vaults of his terminated bank. In Polk's day the excitements of the Mexican war gave life and germination to all seeds of rascality. There has never been a time when the fierce light of incessant inquiry blazing on men in public life, would not have brought out such forces of evil as we have seen, or when the condemnation which followed the discovery would have been sharper. And it is among my deepest convictions that, with all which has happened to debase and debauch it, the nation at large was never before more mentally vigorous or morally sound than it is to-day. When the war of 1861 broke on the land, and shadowed every home within it, this city-which had voted, by immense majorities, against the existing administration, and which was linked by a million ties with the great communities that were rushing to assail it-flung out its banners from window and spire, from City Hall and newspaper office, and poured its wealth and life into the service of sustaining the Government, with a swiftness and strength and a vehement energy that were never surpassed. When, afterward, greedy and treacherous men, capable and shrewd, deceiving the unwary, hiring the skillful, and moulding the very law to their uses, had concentrated in their hands the government of the city, and had bound it in seemingly invincible chains, while they plundered its treasury, it rose upon them, when advised of the facts, as Samson rose upon the Philistines; and the two new cords that were upon his hands no more suddenly became as flax that was burned, than BOSTON BOYS. 55 did those manacles imposed upon the city by the craft of the Ring. Its leaders of opinion to-day are the men whom virtue exalts and character crowns. It rejoices in a Chief Magistrate as upright and intrepid in a virtuous course as any of those whom he succeeds. It is part of a State whose present position, in laws and officers and the spirit of its people, does no discredit to the noblest of its memories. And from these heights between the rivers, looking over the land, looking out on the earth to which its daily embassies go, it sees nowhere beneath the sun a city more ample in its moral securities, a city more dear to those who possess it, a city more splendid in promise and in hope. BOSTON BOYS: (GRANDFATHER'S STORY.) NORA PERRY. What! you want to hear a story all about that old-time glory Then the leader told his story-told the haughty, handsome Tory All the winter through had vexed them, meddled with them and perplexed them, Flinging back to their remonstrance only laughter, threats and sneers. What!" the General cried in wonder-and his tones were tones of thunder "Are these the rebel lessons that your fathers taught you, pray? Did they send such lads as you here, to make such bold ado here, And flout King George's officers upon the king's highway?" Up the little leader started, while heat lightning flashed and darted From his blue eyes, as he answered, stout of voice, with all his might: 56 THE LITTLENESS OF EMINENT MEN. "No one taught us, let me say, sir; no one sent us here to-day, sir; But we're Yankees, Yankees, Yankees, and the Yankees know their rights! "And your soldiers at the first, sir, on the mall there, did their worst, sir Pulled our snow-hills down we'd built there, broke the ice upon the pond: 'Help it, help it, if you can, then!' back they shouted, every man, then, When we asked them, sir, to quit it; and we said, this gces beyond "Soldiers' rights or soldiers' orders, for we've kept within our borders To the south'ard of the mall there, where we've always had our play!" "Where you always shall hereafter, undisturbed by threats or laughter From my officers or soldiers. Go, my brave boys! from this day "Troops of mine shall never harm you, never trouble or alarm you," Suddenly the British General, moved with admiration, cried. In a minute caps were swinging, five-and-twenty voices ringing In a shout and cheer that summoned every neighbor, far and wide. And these neighbors told the story, how the haughty, handsome Tory, Bowing, smiling, hat in hand, there faced the little rebel band; How he said, just then and after, half in earnest, half in laughter: "So it seems the very children strike for Freedom in this land!" So I tell you now the story all about that old-time glory, As my father's father told it, long and long ago, to me; How they met and had it out there, what he called their bloodless bout there; How he felt "What! was he there, then?" Why, the leader, that was he! THE LITTLENESS OF EMINENT MEN. WM. H. DE SHON Humanity presents two phases of greatness and littleness: the national and the individual. National greatness is rarely concealed; that of individuals is often unknown and unrewarded. Many a noble heart closes its life of patient toil, and the world never eulogizes its loving deeds, its heroism, its greatness. Unless coupled with greatness, individual littleness seldom becomes notorious. If Hamlet had never uttered his sublime THE LITTLENESS OF EMINENT MEN. 57 words, if Macbeth and Brutus had never murdered, if Lear had never cursed and Portia pleaded, if Shylock had never hated or Jessica loved, the world, perchance, would have never heard of Will. Shakespeare, the poacher and gallant. Why should we remember that on a wild, stormy night, at such a time, at such a place, intemperance added another to its victims, if the weird voice of a mystic raven did not unite with that of every tinkling, chiming, clanging, tolling bell, to proclaim the genius and keep green the memory of Edgar A. Poe? Ambition was the absorbing littleness of Napoleon. Not that hackneyed word of many meanings under which the nineteenth century has classed two-thirds of the human passions; but that ambition whose subtle purity Shakespeare defines, whose superior littleness Milton has demonized. Its flame kindled at the storming of the barricade in '89, burned in full glory at Austerlitz, paled at Moscow, flickered at Waterloo, and went out in the tempest at St. Helena. Percy Shelley was one of the few great-hearted men the world has seen. Endowed with a rare purity of intellect, a classic beauty of expression, a yearning tenderness towards all of God's creatures, no poet appeals so tenderly to our love for the beautiful, to our respect for our fellow-men, to our heartfelt charity for human weakness, as Shelley. And yet the blue Mediterranean chanted a troubled requiem when the light of his life went out in its waters. The sunny Italian sky looked grimly down when the sea beneath sang hoarsely to rest her laureate. Doubt was the littleness of Shelley, to which all others were subservient. Its power over him is forcibly illustrated by one incident of his life. At the foot of Mt. Blanc, under the shadow of its awful presence, within sight of its eternal snows, within hearing of its sweeping avalanches, the startled traveler sees written on the face of the living rock: "P. Shelley, Atheist." Atheist! and the sublime reverence of every snow-capped summit acknowledging a Creator. Atheist! and the breathless solitude, unbroken save by the anthems of the avalanches, thrilling with divinity. No God! and he a child of nature, a lover of the simplest flower, a worshiper of the tiniest bird. An infidel philanthropist ! and God alone the source of love. A doubting 58 THE EXAMPLE OF THE FATHERS. reformer! and right triumphing only through faith in the Infinite. Mythology has it that Achilles, when a child, was dipped by his mother in the Styx, to render him invulnerable. The grasp of the good woman caused a part of his foot to be untouched by the miraculous water. Through her oversight, a Greek hero, who had passed through countless battles unharmed, perished at last from a wound in the heel. So Mother Nature may immerse her children in the waters of a pure humanity, thinking to render them invulnerable to the attacks of littleness, unconscious of her mistake until the world's great battle-fields are strewn with her dead. Not until Christianity has disunited greatness and littleness can the world hope the millennium. THE EXAMPLE OF THE FATHERS. CHARLES DEVENS, JR, honor of the It is the step seek to com We stand to-day on a great battle-field, in patriotism and valor of those who fought upon it. which they made in the world's history we would memorate; it is the example which they have offered us we would seek to imitate. The wise and thoughtful men who directed this controversy knew well that it is by the wars that personal ambition has stimulated, by the armies whose force has been wielded alike for domestic oppression or foreign conquest, that the sway of despots has been so widely maintained. They had no love for war or any of its works, but they were more ready to meet its dangers in their attachment to the cause of civil and religious liberty. They desired to found no Roman republic, "whose banners, fanned by conquest's crimson wing," should float victorious over prostrate nations; but one where the serene beauty of the arts of peace should put to shame the strifes that have impoverished peoples and degraded nations. To-day let us rejoice in the liberty which they have gained for us; but let no utterances but those of peace salute our ears—no thoughts but those of peace animate our hearts. |