Volume Ii Part 3 (2/2)

Well, college life in my generation--and I certainly had a singular reminder to-night from you, Mr. President, that I belonged to a generation that has pa.s.sed out of memory, for you have excited the enthusiasm of this company only in the applause that you have drawn from those who were graduated under Presidents Woolsey and Porter. What are you to say for us who graduated under President Day? College life, I was about to say, is a charming life. The best men, we may presume, are collected from the community, placed under the happiest relations one to another and under the happiest influences from above and around them.

The President of the college has spoken to you of the pleasing fact that there is an endowment of seventy thousand dollars for fellows.h.i.+ps. Well, when I was in college, a very moderate endowment of five dollars contributed by those who were a.s.sociated as companions was a very good endowment for good fellows.h.i.+p. [Laughter.] And now in looking at life as it is, as we remember it in college and have seen it since, who is there that would compare mere fellows.h.i.+p with good-fellows.h.i.+p? What is there that is heartier, what sincerer, what more generous and what more just than the relations of young men of a liberal spirit toward one another in college? How many of us as we have gone on in life, prosperous, as we may have been, with nothing to complain of as to our success or our situation--how many of us have been disposed to repeat that lament of aeneas where he was continually baffled in holding closer conversation with his G.o.ddess-mother who was always carried off in a nimbus or her accents lost in the whisper of the wind:--

”cur dextrae jungere dextram Non datur, ac veras audire et reddere voces?”

Maybe in the good-fellows.h.i.+p of after-life, you, Mr. President, will not hesitate to walk down Broadway with your arm over General Jackson's shoulder and his about your waist, and then all the people shall cry with applause: ”See how Yale men love one another!”

You will observe, from this little cla.s.sic allusion that I am on the side of those who favor in the curriculum the maintenance of the learned languages. For myself, whether an education in the cla.s.sic languages and in the cla.s.sic literature should or should not be discarded from the education of the n.o.ble youth of the country is the question whether it is worth while in the advancing and strenuous life of modern times that men should have a liberal education. For be sure that there is no trait in that education that ent.i.tles it to the name of liberal more sure and more valuable than this education in the literature, in the history, in the language of the great men of the ages past. If any boy is put through what is called a liberal education, and finds when he goes out from it, that he is not on a level with those who understand and cherish the Greek language and literature, he will find that he is mistaken in wis.h.i.+ng to dispense with that distinguis.h.i.+ng trait.

I am able to give you a very interesting anecdote, as it seems to me, of this very point, of how a great man, great in his power, great in his fame, yet of an ingenuous and simple nature, may look at this accomplishment. On my return from Europe, when I first visited it, upon a public errand, while President Lincoln was at the height of his fame from the a.s.sured although not completed success and triumph in the war, and from the great transaction that had made him one of the famous men for all ages--the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves--I had occasion, in a friendly meeting with him, to express a hope that he would find it in his power after the cares of State were laid aside to visit Europe and see the statesmen and great men there whose mouths were full of plaudits for his a.s.sured accomplished fame. Said he: ”You are very kind in thinking I should meet with a reception so gratifying as you have proposed, and I certainly should enjoy as much as any one the acquisition and the observation that such a visit would give; but,”

added he, ”as you know very well my early education was of the narrowest, and in the society in which I should move I should be constantly exposed in conversation to have a sc.r.a.p of Greek or Latin spoken that I should know nothing about.” Certainly that was a very peculiar statement to be made by this wonderful man, but it struck me at the moment that his clear mind, his self-poised nature, recognized the fact that his greatness and his fame did not lie in the direction of an a.s.sociation with what he regarded as the accomplished men of society and of public life brought.

I believe, therefore, that we will stand by the college while it stands by the Greek and the Latin, and certainly as representatives of the great ma.s.s of graduates we can now talk more of Greek and Latin as a common accomplishment than the greatest genius and orators of ancient times, Demosthenes or Cicero, could of English. [Laughter.]

There are many things, gentlemen, that if I were the President of this a.s.sociation or the President of the University, I should say and expect to be listened to, while saying it. But I confess that I have pretty much exhausted, as I perceive, your patience and my own capacity. I am now living for the reputation of making short speeches, and I am only afraid that my life will not be long enough to succeed. But I promise you that if I get a good forum and a good audience like this I will run a short speech even if I run it into the mud. [Applause.]

LIBERTY ENLIGHTENING THE WORLD

[Speech of William M. Evarts at the banquet given by the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, June 24, 1885, to the officers of the French national s.h.i.+p ”Isere,” which brought over the Bartholdi statue. Charles Stewart Smith, vice-President of the Chamber, presided at the dinner and introduced the speaker as follows: ”Gentlemen, fill your gla.s.ses for the seventh regular toast: 'Liberty Enlightening the World, a great truth beautifully and majestically expressed by the unique gift which our guests of to-night have brought safely to our sh.o.r.es.' The gentleman who will respond to this toast needs no introduction--Senator William M. Evarts.”]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I may be permitted at the outset, to speak a little about the share that we have taken on this side of the water in this great achievement which in its glorious consummation, now receives the applause of the world.

When this great conception of friends.h.i.+p for America, joy at our triumph, and their own undaunted love of liberty, liberty for France, liberty for the United States, liberty for the world, arose, then the French people were set aflame with a desire to bring, as it were, their gifts of frankincense and myrrh to lay on this altar of liberty, that its censer might never die out, but forever perfume and enn.o.ble the air of the world. [Applause.]

The genius of Art, the patriotism of France, the enthusiasm of its people, accomplished by contributions drawn from more than one hundred thousand, perhaps two hundred thousand givers, made up this statue, not equalled in the history of the world, and not conceived in its genius or its courage before. [Applause.]

Then it was for us to say whether we would furnish the pedestal upon which this great gift and emblem of Liberty should find its secure and permanent home; without the aid of the Government and by the movement of our own people in this city, an organization wholly voluntary, and without pretension or a.s.sumption had the faith that the American people would furnish a home fit for the statue of Liberty, however magnificent should be the reception, that would comport with its own splendor.

[Cheers.]

This organization undertook actively its work in 1882, before the statue was completed, and while it remained somewhat uncertain to many who doubted whether the great statue would really be brought to its antic.i.p.ated prosperity and success. But we went on, and now, within three years, this work, both of receiving and collecting subscriptions and of raising the pedestal itself, will have been completed, and I do not hesitate to say, in the face of all critics and all doubters, that a work of so great magnitude, either in its magnificence, or in its labor, has never before been completed in so short a time. [Applause.]

When we were reasonably a.s.sured of adequate funds, we commenced the concrete base on which this pedestal was to rest; and no structure of that kind, of that magnitude, of that necessity, of that perfection and permanence has ever been accomplished in the works of masonry before.

[Cheers.] Commencing on the ninth of October, 1883, it was completed on the seventeenth day of May, 1884--and then commenced the work of the structure proper, of the pedestal, and it went on, and it went on, and it went sure, and it went safe, if it went slow, and there it stands.

[Cheers.]

And now a word or two about the Committee. An eminent lawyer of our city was once detected and exposed and applauded for being seen standing with his hands in his own pockets [laughter], and for about three months, if you had visited the meetings of this Committee of ours, you would have seen the whole a.s.sembly standing with their hands in their own pockets [applause], and taking the first step forward asking their fellow-citizens to follow us, and not for us to follow them. [Cheers.]

And so we went on, and on the tenth of this present month, we had received in hand $241,000, of which $50,000 came from the grand and popular movement of a great newspaper--”The World” [three cheers for ”The World”]--fifty thousand dollars! and that made up substantially what we had announced in advance as what would be required to complete the pedestal. But where did we miscarry even in that calculation? The exploration showed us that the concrete ma.s.s must go deeper in the ground, and that cost us alone $85,000, about $30,000 more than we had counted upon before the exploration; and then the $20,000 more that makes it up to the $300,000 as our need to complete the pedestal (when we had counted upon $250,000), is made by such delay and such expenses as made the general outlay for this immense structure, continuing longer than would have been necessary, had the promptness of contributions kept pace with the possibility of completion.

Now, gentlemen, we have been patient and quiet. Nearly one-fourth of the contributions of the general citizens came from the pockets of the Committee. Instead of hearing from enterprising Chicago, and ambitious Boston, they are talking about the slowness and the dulness of New York's appreciation, of the delays in its contributions. Let the example of our patriotism and munificence be an example for them to imitate; and this city of Boston--let their people there reflect that, when they built Bunker Hill monument, it cost I am informed scarcely $100,000.

They were twenty years in raising it, although the whole country was canva.s.sed in its aid. [Laughter.]

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