CHAUNCEY MITCHELL DEPEW The career of Chauncey Depew, at the present writing representing New York in the Senate of the United States at Washington, illustrates to a remarkable degree the versatility of the American temperament, and sets the example of a public spirit worthy of emulation by our successful men of affairs. His ancestors were French Huguenots and sturdy patriots of New England, including Roger Sherman, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and Gabriel Ogden of the Continental Army. It is not surprising, therefore, considering his distinguished ancestry, that he should show the interest in the political questions of the day and the devotion to the natural development of the country which have always marked his course. He was born in the village of Peekskill, New York, on April 23, 1834, where he spent his childhood and school days; thence he went to Yale University (at that time a college) and was graduated in the class of 1856. After two years' study of the law, he was admitted to the bar in 1858, and in the same year, becoming interested in politics, he was sent to the New York State Convention. The year 1860 found him actively engaged in the presidential campaign for Abraham Lincoln, during which his great powers as an orator were quickly recognized, thus paving the way for his election to the New York Legislature, and subsequently to the important post of Secretary of State. In 1866 he was retained by the Vanderbilts to act as counsel for the New York and Harlem Railroad, and from this position he rose by successive steps to the presidency of the New York Central Railroad, filling this position until his election in 1899 as United States Senator from New York. During this long period of business activity his interest in his party and the country at large remained unabated. Thus it happens that his great influence and well-known powers as an orator have always been closely identified with the political events of the day. At the Republican National Convention of 1888 he was the choice of the delegates from the State of New York for President. It would seem that in a life so filled with business and political endeavor there would remain but scant time for exertion in other fields. Senator Depew, however, has the will, and so has found the way to attend numerous public dinners and other public celebrations, at which the delightful fancy, keen wit, and unusual eloquence of his speeches have placed him in the foremost rank of America's living orators. Among Senator Depew's important speeches is one which is of great interest at the present time, and one which will grow more valuable as the events with which it deals have become only a memory. This speech, delivered before the Lotos Club of New York soon after the Spanish-American war, sets forth the growth of friendship and sympathy between the United States and England, and expresses in wellrounded periods the gratification of both nations over the entente cordiale which had been so long delayed. OUR KIN ACROSS THE SEA Delivered at the Lotos Club banquet to Lord Herschel, New York, November 5, 1898 G ENTLEMEN: When an American has enjoyed the cordial hospitality of an English home he is ever after craving an opportunity to reciprocate in his own country. He discovers that the traditional icy reserve and insular indifference with which the Englishman is popularly credited are only the shield and armor which protect the inhabitants of the centre and capital of the activities of the Old World from the frauds and fools of the whole world. When once thawed out, our kin across the sea can be as demonstrative and, in their own way, as jocose as the untamed natives of these Western wilds. An eminent medical authority, in a learned essay on heredity and longevity, advanced this theory: That the emigrant from the British Isles to our shores, under the influence of our dry and exciting atmosphere, becomes, in a few generations, abnormally nervous, thin, and dyspeptic. Between forty and fifty he can arrest the speed with which he is hurrying to an untimely grave, if he will move over to England. The climate there will work upon his ancestral tendencies, and he will develop backward to the original type. Instead of his restless spirit reading the epitaph upon his tombstone in the United States, he will be enjoying life in the old country in the seventies and eighties, be taking his daily gospel from the "Times," and, on gouty days, lamenting modern degeneracy. The converse must be equally true, and the Englishman who has passed his climacteric and is afflicted with inertia and adipose, will find in the sunshine and champagne air of America the return of the energy and athletic possibilities of his youth. Thus the two countries in the exchange, will exhibit a type which, once safely past the allotted line of life, in their new environment, will keep going on forever. None of us want to quit this earthly scene so long as we can retain health and mind. The attractions of the heavenly city are beyond description, but residence there runs through such countless ages that a decade, more or less, before climbing the golden stairs, is a loss of rich experience this side, and not noticed on the other. It is a singular fact that the United States has known England for nearly three hundred years, and England has known little about the United States until within the past ten years. Eight years ago Mr. Gladstone asked me about the newspapers in this country. I told him that the press in nearly all of our large cities had from a half to a whole column of European cables daily, and three columns on Sunday, and two-thirds of it was about English affairs. He expressed surprise and pleasure, and great regret that the English press was not equally full of American news. From ten to fifty lines on our markets was all the information British readers had about our interests, unless a lynching, a railroad smash-up or a big corporation suddenly gone bankrupt commanded all the space required and gave a lively picture of our settled habits. English statesmen of all parties have been as well known and understood by our people for a quarter of a century as those of our own country, while beyond Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield, the British public never heard of our party leaders and public men. Such is the power and educational value of the press. With the advent of Smalley, Norman, and others, sending full despatches from the United States to the English newspapers, our press relations have become reciprocal. The American in England is as much in touch each morning with the happenings at home as the Englishman is in America with the affairs of Europe. This daily interchange of information as to the conditions, the situation, the opinions, and the mutual interests of the two countries has been of incalculable benefit in bringing about a better acquaintance and more cordial sentiments between these two great English-speaking nations. The better we know each other, the riper grows our friendship. The publication of Bryce's " American Commonwealth" was the dawn of a clearer understanding and closer relations. In my school days the boys of the village still played "Fee, fi, fow, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman; dead or alive I will have some." An East Tennessee Union farmer, coming into Knoxville in the early days of the Civil War, heard of Mason and Slidell, the Confederate commissioners, who were passengers for Europe on an English merchant vessel, having been taken off by force by an American cruiser and brought back prisoners to this country, and that Great Britain had demanded their release. "What?" he said in great astonishment, "Is that blasted old English machine going yet?" Now, and especially since the practical friendship shown to us by England during our war with Spain, the villagers cheer the entente cordiale between the two countries, and the Tennessee mountaineers and the Rugby colonists join in celebrating the Queen's birthday and the Fourth of July. We have been for a hundred years evoluting toward the mutual understanding of each other and the intelligent friendship which existed between the greatest of Americans, George Washington, and a great Englishman, Lord Shelburne. Shelburne, beyond all of his countrymen, appreciated the American conditions and position in the Revolutionary War, and was the first of foreigners to form that estimate of Washington, as the foremost man of the world, which is now universally accepted. It was for him that Washington sat for a full-length portrait, which now holds the place of honor in the house of another great and brilliant English statesman and warm friend of the United States, Lord Rosebery. On Washington's initiative, and Shelburne's co-operation, the two countries made their famous Jay Treaty of 1796. The government of the United States is, and always has been, a lawyer's government. All but three of our Presidents were lawyers, and four-fifths of our Cabinet ministers, and a large majority of both Houses of Congress, have always been members of the bar. The ambassador who framed and negotiated this treaty was that eminent jurist, John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. In his treaty, for the first time, I think, among nations, appeared the principle of the settlement by arbitration of disputes between nations. Such was the temper of the period, however, one hun |