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T. De Witt Talmage by T. De Witt Talmage

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He was an honest man in the highest sense, with a never-varying purity
of purpose. Dr. Ewer died in the fall of 1883.

I began to feel that in the local management of our own big city there
was an uplift, when two such sterling young men as James W. Ridgeway,
and Joseph C. Hendrix, were nominated for District Attorney. They were
merely technical opponents, but were united in the cause of reform and
honest administration against our criminal population. We were fortunate
in the degree of promise there was, in having a choice of such competent
nominees. But it was a period of historical jubilee in our country, this
fall of 1883.

We were celebrating centennials everywhere, even at Harvard. It seemed
to be about a hundred years back since anything worth while had really
happened in America. Since 1870 there had been a round of centennials.
It was a good thing in the busy glorification of a brilliant present,
and a glorious future, that we rehearsed the struggle and hardships by
which we had arrived to this great inheritance of blessing and
prosperity.

"The United States Government is a bubble-bursting nationality," said
Lord John Russell, but every year since has disproved the accuracy of
this jeer. Even our elections disproved it. Candidates for the
Presidency are pushed out of sight by a sudden wave of split tickets. In
the elections of 1883, in Ohio ten candidates were obliterated; in
Pennsylvania five were buried and fifteen resurrected. In Indiana, the
record of names in United States political quicksands is too long too
consider, the new candidates that sprang up being still larger in
numbers. And yet only six men in any generation become President. Out of
five thousand men, who consider themselves competent to be captains,
only six are crowned with their ambition. And these six are not
generally the men who had any prospect of becoming the people's choice.
The two political chiefs in convention, failing on the thirtieth ballot
to get the nomination, some less conspicuous man is chosen as a
compromise. Political ambition seems to me a poor business. There are
men more worthy of national praise than the successful politicians; men
like Isaac Hull; men whose generous gifts and Christian careers
perpetuate the magnificent purposes of our lives. Isaac Hull was a
Quaker--one of the best in that sect. I lived among quakers for seven
years in Philadelphia, and I loved them. Mr. Hull illustrated in his
life the principles of his sect, characterised by integrity of finance
and of soul. He rose to the front rank of public-spirited men, from the
humble duties of a farmer's boy. He was one of the most important
members of the Society of Friends, and I valued the privilege of his
friendship more than that of any celebrity I ever knew. He lived for the
profit in standards rather than for wealth, and he passed on to a wider
circle of friends beyond.

I have a little list of men who about this time passed away amid many
antagonisms--men who were misunderstood while they lived. I knew their
worth. There was John McKean, the District Attorney of New York, who
died in 1883, when criticism against him, of lawyers and judges, was
most bitter and cruel. A brilliant lawyer, he was accused of
non-performance of duty; but he died, knowing nothing of the delays
complained of. He was blamed for what he could not help. Some stroke of
ill-health; some untoward worldly [_Transcriber's Note: original says
"wordly"_] circumstances, or something in domestic conditions will often
disqualify a man for service; and yet he is blamed for idleness, for
having possessions when the finances are cramped, for temper when the
nerves have given out, for misanthropy when he has had enough to disgust
him for ever with the human race. After we have exhausted the vocabulary
of our abuse, such men die, and there is no reparation we can make. In
spite of the abuse John McKean received, the courts adjourned in honour
of his death--but that was a belated honour. McKean was one of the
kindest of men; he was merciful and brave.

There was Henry Villard, whose bankruptcy of fortune killed him. He was
compelled to resign the presidency of the Northern Pacific Railroad
Company, to resign his fortune, to resign all but his integrity. That he
kept, though every dollar had gone. Only two years before his financial
collapse he was worth $30,000,000. In putting the great Northern Pacific
Railroad through he swamped everything he had. All through Minnesota and
the North-west I heard his praises. He was a man of great heart and
unbounded generosity, on which fed innumerable human leeches, enough of
them to drain the life of any fortune that was ever made. On a
magnificent train he once took, free of charge, to the Yellowstone Park,
a party of men, who denounced him because, while he provided them with
every luxury, they could not each have a separate drawing-room car to
themselves. I don't believe since the world began there went through
this country so many titled nonentities as travelled then, free of cost,
on the generous bounty of Mr. Villard. The most of these people went
home to the other side of the sea, and wrote magazine articles on the
conditions of American society, while Mr. Villard went into bankruptcy.
It was the last straw that broke the camel's back. It would not be so
bad if riches only had wings with which to fly away; but they have claws
with which they give a parting clutch that sometimes clips a man's
reason, or crushes his heart. It is the claw of riches we must look out
for.

Then there was Wendell Phillips! Not a man in this country was more
admired and more hated than he was. Many a time, addressing a big
audience, he would divide them into two parts--those who got up to leave
with indignation, and those who remained to frown. He was often, during
a lecture, bombarded with bricks and bad eggs. But he liked it. He could
endure anything in an audience but silence, and he always had a secure
following of admirers.

He told me once that in some of the back country towns of Pennsylvania
it nearly killed him to lecture. "I go on for an hour," he told me,
"without hearing one response, and I have no way of knowing whether the
people are instructed, pleased, or outraged."

He enjoyed the tempestuous life. His other life was home. It was
dominant in his appreciation. He owed much of his courage to that home.
Lecturing in Boston once, during most agitated times, he received this
note from his wife: "No shilly-shallying, Wendell, in the presence of
this great public outrage." Many men in public life owe their strength
to this reservoir of power at home.

The last fifteen years of his life were devoted to the domestic
invalidism of his home. Some men thought this was unjustifiable. But
what exhaustion of home life had been given to establish his public
career! A popular subscription was started to raise a monument in
Boston to Wendell Phillips. I recommended that it should be built within
sight of the monument erected to Daniel Webster. If there were ever two
men who during their life had an appalling antagonism, they were Daniel
Webster and Wendell Phillips. I hoped at that time their statues would
be erected facing each other. Wendell Phillips was fortunate in his
domestic tower of strength; still, I have known men whose domestic lives
were painful in the extreme, and yet they arose above this deficiency to
great personal prominence.

What is good for one man is not good for another. It is the same with
State rights as it is with private rights. In '83-'84, the whole country
was agitated about the questions of tariff reform and free trade. Tariff
reform for Pennsylvania, free trade for Kentucky. New England and the
North-west had interests that would always be divergent. It was absurd
to try and persuade the American people that what was good for one State
was good for another State. Common intelligence showed how false this
theory was. Until by some great change the manufacturing interests of
the country should become national interests, co-operation and
compromise in inter-state commerce was necessary. No one section of the
country could have its own way. The most successful candidate for the
Presidency at this time seemed to be the man who could most bewilder the
public mind on these questions. Blessed in politics is the political
fog!

The most significantly hopeful fact to me was that the three prominent
candidates for Speakership at the close of 1883--Mr. Carlisle, Mr.
Randall, and Mr. Cox--never had wine on their tables. We were, moreover,
getting away from the old order of things, when senators were
conspicuous in gambling houses. The world was advancing in a spiritual
transit of events towards the close. It was time that it gave way to
something even better. It had treated me gloriously, and I had no fault
to find with it, but I had seen so many millions in hunger and pain, and
wretchedness and woe that I felt this world needed either to be fixed up
or destroyed.

The world had had a hard time for six thousand years, and, as the new
year of 1884 approached, there were indications that our planet was
getting restless. There were earthquakes, great storms, great drought.
It may last until some of my descendants shall head their letters with
January 1, 15,000, A.D.; but I doubt it.




THE EIGHTH MILESTONE

1884-1885


I reached the fiftieth year of my life in December, 1883. In my long
residence in Brooklyn I had found it to be the healthiest city in the
world. It had always been a good place to live in--plenty of fresh air
blowing up from the sea--plenty of water rolling down through our
reservoirs--the Sabbaths too quiet to attract ruffianism.

Of all the men I have seen and heard and known, there were but a few
deep friendships that I depended upon. In February, 1884, I lost one of
these by the decease of Thomas Kinsella, a Brooklyn man of public
affairs, of singular patriotism and local pride.

Years ago, when I was roughly set upon by ecclesiastical assailants, he
gave one wide swing of his editorial scimitar, which helped much in
their ultimate annihilation. My acquaintance with him was slight at the
time, and I did not ask him to help me. I can more easily forget a wrong
done to me than I can forget a kindness. He was charitable to many who
never knew of it. By reason of my profession, there came to me many
stories of distress and want, and it was always Mr. Kinsella's hand that
was open to befriend the suffering. Bitter in his editorial
antagonisms, he was wide in his charities. One did not have to knock at
many iron gates to reach his sympathies.

Mr. Kinsella died of overwork, from the toil of years that taxed his
strength. None but those who have been behind the scenes can appreciate
the energies that are required in making up a great daily newspaper. Its
demands for "copy" come with such regularity. Newspaper writers must
produce just so much, whether they feel like it or not. There is no
newspaper vacation. So the commanders-in-chief of the great dailies
often die of overwork. Henry J. Raymond died that way, Samuel Bowles,
Horace Greeley. Once in a while there are surviving veterans like
Thurlow Weed, or Erastus Brooks, or James Watson Webb--but they shifted
the most of the burden on others as they grew old. Success in any
calling means drudgery, sacrifice, push, and tug, but especially so in
the ranks of the newspaper armies.

A great many of us, however, about this time, survived a worse fate,
though how we did it is still a mystery of the period. We discovered, in
the spring of 1884, that we had been eating and drinking things not to
be mentioned. Honest old-fashioned butter had melted and run out of the
world. Instead of it we had trichinosis in all styles served up morning
and evening--all the evils of the food creation set before us in raw
shape, or done up in puddings, pies, and gravies. The average hotel hash
was innocent merriment compared to our adulterated butter. The candies,
which we bought for our children, under chemical analysis, were found to
be crystallised disease. Lozenges were of red lead. Coffees and teas
were so adulterated that we felt like Charles Lamb, who, in a similar
predicament, said, "If this be coffee, give me tea; and if it be tea,
give me coffee." Even our medicines were so craftily adulterated that
they were sure to kill. There was alum in our bread, chalk in our milk,
glass in our sugar, Venetian red in our cocoa, and heaven knows what in
the syrup.

Too much politics in our food threatened to demoralise our large cities.
The same thing had happened in London, in 1868. We survived it, kept on
preaching against it, and giving money to prosecute the guilty. It was
an age of pursuit; ministers pursuing ministers, lawyers pursuing
lawyers, doctors, merchants, even Arctic explorers pursuing one another,
the North Pole a jealous centre of interest. Everything is frozen in the
Arctic region save the jealousies of the Arctic explorers. Even the
North Pole men were like others. This we discovered in 1884, when, in
Washington, the post-mortem trial of DeLong and his men was in progress.
There was nothing to be gained by the controversy. There were no laurels
to be awarded by this investigation, because the men whose fame was most
involved were dead. It was a quarrel, and the "Jeannette" was the
graveyard in which it took place. It was disgraceful.

Jealousy is the rage of a man, also of a woman.

It was evident, in the progress of this one-sided trial, that our
legislature needed to have their corridors, their stairways, and their
rooms cleaned of lobbyists.

At the State Capital in Albany, one bright spring morning in the same
year, the legislature rose and shook itself, and the Sergeant-at-Arms
was instructed to drive the squad of lobbyists out of the building. He
did it so well that he scarcely gave them time to get their canes or
their hats. Some of the lowest men in New York and Brooklyn were among
them. That was a spring cleaning worth while. But it was only a little
corner of the political arena that was unclean.

I remember how eagerly, when I went to Canada in April, the reporters
kept asking me who would be the next President. It would have been such
an easy thing to answer if I had only known who the man was. In this
dilemma I suggested some of our best presidential timber in Brooklyn as
suitable candidates. These were General Slocum, General Woodford,
General Tracey, Mayor Low, Judge Pratt, Judge Tierney, Mr. Stranahan,
and Judge Neilson. Some of these men had been seriously mentioned for
the office. Honourable mention was all they got, however. They were too
unpretentious for the role. It was the beginning of a mud-slinging
campaign. New York versus New York--Brooklyn versus Brooklyn.

I long ago came to the conclusion that the real heroes of the world were
on the sea. The ambitions of men crowded together on land were
incontestably disgusting. On the vast, restless deep men stand alone, in
brave conflict with constant danger. I was always deeply impressed by
the character of men, as revealed in disasters of the sea. There were
many of them during my life-time. The bigger the ships grew, the more
dangerous became ocean travel. Our improvements seemed to add to the
humour of grim old Neptune. In 1884 the ocean was becoming a great
turnpike road, and people were required by law to keep to the right or
to the left. A population of a million sailors was on the sea at all
times. Some of the ships were too busy to stop to save human lives, as
was the case in the disaster of the "Florida." In distress, her captain
hailed "The City of Rome," a monster of the deep. But "The City of
Rome" had no time to stop, and passed on by. The lifeboats of the
"Florida" were useless shells, utterly unseaworthy. The "Florida" was
unfit for service. John Bayne, the engineer, was the hero who lost his
life to save others. But this was becoming a common story of the sea;
for when the "Schiller" went down, Captain Thomas gave his life for
others. When the "Central-America" sank, President Arthur's
father-in-law perished in the same way. Every shipwreck I have known
seems lighted up with some marvellous deed of heroism in man.

In 1884 there was a failure in Wall Street for eight or ten million
dollars, and hundreds went down during this shipwreck. By heroism and
courage alone were they able to outlive it. To whom did all this money
belong? To those who were drowned in the storm of financial sea. But it
was only a Wall Street flurry; it did not affect the national ship as it
would have done twenty years before. The time had passed when Wall
Street could jeopardise the commerce of the country. Twenty years
before, such a calamity in three days' time would have left all the
business of the nation in the dust. It would have crashed down all the
banks, the insurance companies, the stock-houses. New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans--from coast to coast,
everything would have tumbled down.

The principal lesson derived from this panic was to keep excitable men
out of Wall Street. While the romance of a failure for hundreds of
thousands of dollars is more appealing than a failure for a small sum,
the greater the deficit the greater the responsibility. Ferdinand Ward
was in this Wall Street crash of 1883. The roseate glasses of wealth
through which he saw the world had made him also see millions in every
direction. George L. Seney lost his bank and railroad stock in this
failure, but he had given hundreds of thousands to the cause of
education, North and South. Some people regretted that he had not kept
his fortune to help him out of his trouble. I believe there were
thousands of good people all over the country who prayed that this
philanthropist might be restored to wealth. There was one man in Wall
Street at this time who I said could not fail. He was Mr. A.S. Hatch,
President of the New York Stock Exchange. He had given large sums of
money to Christian work, and was personally an active church member.

That which I hear about men who are unfortunate makes no impression on
me. There is always a great jubilee over the downfall of a financier. I
like to put the best phase possible upon a man's misfortune. No one
begrudged the wealth of the rich men of the past.

The world was becoming too compressed, it was said; there was not room
enough to get away from your troubles. All the better. It was getting to
a compactness that could be easily poked up and divinely appropriated. A
new cable was landed at Rockport, Mass., that was to bring the world
into closer reunion of messages. We were to have cheaper cable service
under the management of the Commercial Cable Company. Simultaneously
with this information, the s.s. "America" made the astounding record of
a trip from shore to shore of the Atlantic, in six days fourteen hours
and eighteen minutes. It was a startling symbol of future wonders. I
promised then to exchange pulpits with any church in England once a
month. It seemed a possibility, as proposed in Mr. Corbin's scheme of
harbours at Montauk Point. There were pauses in the breathless speed we
were just beginning at this time. We paused to say farewell to the good
men whom we were passing by. They were not spectacular. Some of them
will no doubt be unknown to the reader.

A gentle old man, his face illumined always by a radiant smile, fell
behind. He was Bishop Simpson. We paused to bid him farewell. In 1863,
walking the streets of Philadelphia one night with an army surgeon, we
passed the Academy of Music in that city, where a meeting was being held
on behalf of the Christian Commission, the object of which was to take
care of wounded soldiers. As we stood at the back of the stage
listening, the meeting seemed to be very dull. A speaker was introduced.
His voice was thin, his manner unimpressive. My friend said, "Let's go,"
but I replied, "Wait until we see what there is in him." Suddenly, he
grew upon us. The address became adorned with a pathos, a sublimity, and
an enthusiasm that overwhelmed the audience. When the speaker sat down,
I inquired who he was.

"That is Bishop Simpson," said my informant. In later years, I learned
that the Bishop's address that night was the great hour of his life. His
reputation became national. He was one of the few old men who knew how
to treat young men. He used no gestures on the platform, no climaxes, no
dramatic effects of voice, yet he was eloquent beyond description. His
earnestness broke over and broke through all rules of rhetoric. He made
his audiences think and feel as he did himself. That, I believe, is the
best of a man's inner salvation.

In the autumn of the same year we paused to close the chapters of Jerry
McCauley's life, a man who had risen from the depths of crime and
sin--a different sort of man from Bishop Simpson. He was born in the
home of a counterfeiter. He became a thief, an outlaw. By an influence
that many consider obsolete and old-fashioned, he became converted, and
was recognised by the best men and women in New York and Brooklyn. I
knew McCauley. I stood with him on the steps of his mission in Water
Street. He was a river thief changed into an angel. It was supernatural,
a miracle. McCauley gave twelve years to his mission work. Two years
before his death he changed his quarters, converting a dive into a House
of God. What an imbecile city government refused to touch was
surrendered to hosannas and doxologies. The story of Jerry McCauley's
missionary work in the heart of a wicked section of New York was called
romantic. I attest that I am just as keenly sensitive to the beauty of
romance as any human being, but there was a great deal that was called
romantic in American life in 1884-1885 that was not so. Romance became a
roseate mist, through which old and young saw the obligations of life
but dimly.

A strange romance of marriage became epidemic in America at this time.
European ethics were being imported, and the romance of European liberty
swept over us. A parental despotism was responsible. The newspapers of
the summer of 1884 were full of elopements. They were long exciting
chapters of domestic calamity. My sympathies were with the young fellow
of seven hundred dollars income, married to a millionaire fool who
continually informed him how much better her position was before she
left home; the honeymoon a bliss of six months, and all the rest of his
life a profound wish that he had never been born; his only redress the
divorce court or the almshouse. The poetry of these elopements was
false, the prose that came after was the truth. Marriage is an
old-fashioned business, and that wedding procession lasts longest that
starts not down the ladder out of the back window, but from the front
door with a benediction.

But, morally and politically, we were in a riot of opinion against which
I constantly protested. Politically, we were without morals.

The opposing Presidential candidates in 1884 were Grover Cleveland and
James G. Blaine. It was the wonder of the world that the American people
did not make Mr. Blaine President. There was a world-wide amazement also
at the abuse which preceded Mr. Cleveland's election. The whole thing
was a spectacle of the ignorance of men about great men. All sorts of
defamatory reports were spread abroad about them. Men of mind are also
men of temperament. There are two men in every one man, and for this
reason Mr. Blaine was the most misunderstood of great men. To the end of
his brilliant life calumny pursued him. There were all sorts of reports
about him.

One series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was almost unable to walk;
that he was too sick to be seen; that death was for him close at hand,
and his obituaries were in type in many of the printing offices.

The other series of reports said that Mr. Blaine was vigorous; went up
the front steps of his house at a bound; was doing more work than ever,
and was rollicking with mirth. The baleful story was ascribed to his
enemies, who wanted the great man out of the world. The reassuring story
was ascribed to his friends, who wanted to keep him in the ranks of
Presidential possibilities.

The fact is that both reports were true. There were two Mr. Blaines, as
there are two of every mercurial temperament. Of the phlegmatic,
slow-pulsed man there is only one. You see him once and you see him as
he always is. Not so with the nervous organisation. He has as many moods
as the weather, as many changes as the sky. He is bright or dull, serene
or tempestuous, cold or hot, up or down, January or August, day or
night, Arctic or tropical. At Washington, in 1889, I saw the two Blaines
within two hours. I called with my son to see the great Secretary of
State at his office, and although it was his day for seeing foreign
diplomats, he received us with great cordiality. His face was an
illumination; his voice resonant; his manner animated; he was full of
gesticulation. He walked up and down the room describing things under
discussion; fire in his eye, spring in his step. Although about
fifty-nine years of age, he looked forty-five, and strong enough to
wrestle with two or three ordinary men. He had enough vitality for an
athlete.

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