Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/85

34 whose names are household words throughout the length and breadth of our land, I feel as did a certain colored defendant in a criminal case which was recently tried in the United States District Court of my city. He had been charged with selling liquor without a license, and the Government had proved a strong case against him. When his attorney asked him whether he desired to take the stand and testify in his own behalf, the son of Africa replied: "Boss, I think I had better remain neutral." Similarly, with men like General Shafter and Governor Roosevelt as your speakers, I feel that I should remain neutral.

Indeed, in the presence of these military gentlemen, I feel as did the Burgess of Gettysburg, who, on the first day of that famous battle, sent word to Generals Lee and Meade that it was against the ordinances of the town to fire off firearms within the borough limits. A poor civilian, I serve like notice upon the warriors, lest their rhetorical fireworks overwhelm me to-night. Perhaps, however, I am unnecessarily borrowing trouble in New York, as Mr. Pierpont Morgan will bear me out, trouble is all one can borrow without collateral but can I not rely upon your generous forbearance, and that you will treat me with the same princely courtesy as did young Hamlet when he bade Polonius treat well the players who had journeyed to Elsinore to entertain his lordship? "Use them," said Hamlet, "after your own honor and dignity; the less their deserving the more merit is your bounty."

You have been gracious enough to assign to me a noble and inspiring toast. It calls to our mind that little vessel, tossing in the immeasurable waste of waters, so crowded with its cargo of human life that the men slept in the very boats upon the davits, driven by winter blasts that were not so relentless as the spirit of persecution which the Pilgrims left behind, and named the "Mayflower" in unconscious prophecy of the fact that the long winter of political tyranny was about to break, and the springtime of civil and religious liberty to dawn for the human race. How fallible are the judgments that any generation places upon contemporaneous men and events! How little the world took note of this little vessel as it slowly ploughed its way westward across the waters! How little did James the First, as he then