Part 21

What I have seen and heard during my stay among you has forced on me the belief that this slow change from habitual inertness to persistent activity has reached an extreme from which there must begin a counter-change--a reaction. Everywhere I have been struck with the number of faces which told in strong lines of the burdens that had to be borne. I have been struck, too, with the large proportion of gray-haired men; and inquiries have brought out the fact that with you the hair commonly begins to turn some ten years earlier than with us. Moreover, in every circle I have met men who had themselves suffered from nervous collapse due to the stress of business, or named friends who had either killed themselves by overwork or had been permanently incapacitated or had wasted long periods in endeavors to recover health. I do but echo the opinion of all the observant persons I have spoken to that immense injury is being done by this high-pressure life--the physique is being undermined. That subtle thinker and poet whom you have lately had to mourn--Emerson,--says in his "Essay on the Gentleman," that the first requisite is that he shall be a good animal. The requisite is a general one--it extends to man, the father, the citizen. We hear a great deal about the "vile body"; and many are encouraged by the phrase to transgress the laws of health. But Nature quietly suppresses those who treat thus disrespectfully one of her highest products and leaves the world to be peopled by the descendants of those who are not so foolish.

Beyond these immediate mischiefs, there are remoter mischiefs. Exclusive devotion to work has the result that amusements cease to please; and when relaxation becomes imperative, life becomes dreary from lack of its sole interest--the interest in business. The remark current in England that when the American travels, his aim is to do the greatest amount of sight-seeing in the shortest time, I find current here also; it is recognized that the satisfaction of getting on devours nearly all other satisfactions. When recently at Niagara, which gave us a whole week's pleasure, I learned from the landlord of the hotel that most Americans come one day and go away the next. Old Froissart, who said of the English of his day that "they take their pleasures sadly after their fashion," would doubtless, if he lived now, say of the Americans that "they take their pleasures hurriedly after their fashion." In large measure with us, and still more with you, there is not that abandonment to the moment which is requisite for full enjoyment; and this abandonment is prevented by the ever-present sense of multitudinous responsibilities. So that beyond the serious physical mischief caused by overwork, there is the further mischief that it destroys what value there would otherwise be in the leisure part of life. Nor do the evils end here. There is the injury to posterity. Damaged constitutions re-appear in their children and entail on them far more of ill than great fortunes yield them of good. When life has been duly rationalized by science, it will be seen that among a man's duties the care of the body is imperative not only out of regard for personal welfare, but also out of regard for descendants. His constitution will be considered as an entailed estate which he ought to pass on uninjured if not improved to those who follow; and it will be held that millions bequeathed by him will not compensate for feeble health and decreased ability to enjoy life.

Once more, there is the injury to fellow-citizens taking the shape of undue regard of competitors. I hear that a great trader among you deliberately endeavored to crush out everyone whose business competed with his own; and manifestly the man who, making himself a slave to accumulation, absorbs an inordinate share of the trade or profession he is engaged in, makes life harder for all others engaged in it and excludes from it many who might otherwise gain competencies. Thus, besides the egoistic motive, there are two altruistic motives which should deter from this excess in work.

The truth is there needs a revised ideal of life. Look back through the past, or look abroad through the present, and we find that the ideal of life is variable and depends on social conditions. Everyone knows that to be a successful warrior was the highest aim among all ancient peoples of note, as it is still among many barbarous peoples. When we remember that in the Norseman's heaven, the time was to be passed in daily battles with magical healing of wounds, we see how deeply rooted may become the conception that fighting is man's proper business and that industry is fit only for slaves and people of low degree. That is to say, when the chronic struggles of races necessitate perpetual wars there is evolved an ideal of life adapted to the requirements. We have changed all that in modern civilized societies, especially in England and still more in America. With the decline of militant activity and the growth of industrial activity the occupations once disgraceful have become honorable. The duty to work has taken the place of the duty to fight; and in the one case as in the other the ideal of life has become so well established that scarcely anybody dreams of questioning it. Practical business has been substituted for war as the purpose of existence.

Is this modern ideal to survive throughout the future? I think not. While all other things undergo continuous change, it is impossible that ideals should remain fixed. The ancient ideal was appropriate to the ages of conquest by man over man and spread of the strongest races. The modern ideal is appropriate to ages in which conquest of the earth and subjection of the powers of Nature to human use is the predominant need. But hereafter, when both these ends have in the main been achieved, the ideal formed will probably differ considerably from the present one. May we not foresee the nature of the difference? I think we may.

Some twenty years ago, a good friend of mine and a good friend of yours, too, though you never saw him, John Stuart Mill, delivered at St. Andrew's an inaugural address on the occasion of his appointment to the Lord Rectorship. It contained much to be admired, as did all he wrote; there ran through it, however, the tacit assumption that life is for learning and working. I felt at the time that I should have liked to take up the opposite thesis. I should have liked to contend that life is not for learning nor is life for working, but learning and working are for life. The primary use of knowledge is for such guidance of conduct under all circumstances as shall make living complete--all other uses of knowledge are secondary. It scarcely needs saying that the primary use of work is that of supplying the materials and aids to living completely; and that any other uses of work are secondary. But in men's conceptions the secondary has in great measure usurped the place of the primary.

The apostle of culture, as culture is commonly conceived, Mr. Matthew Arnold, makes little or no reference to the fact that the first use of knowledge is the right ordering of all actions; and Mr. Carlyle, who is a good exponent of current ideas about work, insists on its virtues for quite other reasons than that it achieves sustentation. We may trace everywhere in human affairs a tendency to transform the means into the end. All see that the miser does this when making the accumulation of money his sole satisfaction; he forgets that money is of value only to purchase satisfactions. But it is less commonly seen that the like is true of the work by which the money is accumulated--that industry, too, bodily or mental, is but a means, and that it is as irrational to pursue it to the exclusion of that complete living it subserves as it is for the miser to accumulate money and make no use of it. Hereafter when this age of active material progress has yielded mankind its benefits there will, I think, come a better adjustment of labor and enjoyment. Among reasons for thinking this there is the reason that the processes of evolution throughout the world at large bring an increasing surplus of energies that are not absorbed in fulfilling material needs and point to a still larger surplus for humanity of the future. And there are other reasons which I must pass over. In brief, I may say that we have had somewhat too much of the "gospel of work." It is time to preach the gospel of relaxation.

This is a very unconventional after-dinner speech. Especially it will be thought strange that in returning thanks I should deliver something very much like a homily. But I have thought I could not better convey my thanks than by the expression of a sympathy which issues in a fear. If, as I gather, this intemperance in work affects more especially the Anglo-American part of the population, if there results an undermining of the physique not only in adults, but also in the young, who as I learn from your daily journals are also being injured by overwork--if the ultimate consequence should be a dwindling away of those among you who are the inheritors of free institutions and best adapted to them, then there will come a further difficulty in the working out of that great future which lies before the American nation. To my anxiety on this account you must please ascribe the unusual character of my remarks.

And now I must bid you farewell. When I sail by the Germanic on Saturday, I shall bear with me pleasant remembrances of my intercourse with many Americans, joined with regrets that my state of health has prevented me from seeing a larger number.

ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY

AMERICA VISITED

[Speech of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, Dean of Westminster, at the breakfast given by the Century Club, New York City, November 2, 1878.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--The hospitality shown to me has been no exception to that with which every Englishman meets in this country, in the endless repetition of kind words and the overwhelming pressure of genial entertainment which has been thrust upon me. That famous Englishman, Dr. Johnson, when he went from England to Scotland, which, at that time, was a more formidable undertaking than is a voyage from England to America at the present time, met at a reception at St. Andrew's a young professor who said, breaking the gloomy silence of the occasion: "I trust you have not been disappointed!" And the famous Englishman replied: "No; I was told that I should find men of rude manners and savage tastes, and I have not been disappointed." So, too, when I set out for your shores I was told that I should meet a kindly welcome and the most friendly hospitality. I can only say, with Dr. Johnson, I have not been disappointed.

But in my vivid though short experience of American life and manners, I have experienced not only hospitality, but considerate and thoughtful kindness, for which I must ever be grateful. I can find it in my heart even to forgive the reporters who have left little of what I have said or done unnoted, and when they have failed in this, have invented fabulous histories of things which I never did and sayings which I never uttered. Sometimes when I have been questioned as to my impressions and views of America, I have been tempted to say with an Englishman who was hard pressed by his constituents with absurd solicitations: "Gentlemen, this is the humblest moment of my life, that you should take me for such a fool as to answer all your questions." But I know their good intentions and I forgive them freely.

The two months which I have spent on these shores seem to me two years in actual work, or two centuries rather, for in them I have lived through all American history. In Virginia I saw the era of the earliest settlers, and I met John Smith and Pocahontas on the shores of the James River. In Philadelphia I lived with William Penn, but in a splendor which I fear would have shocked his simple soul. At Salem I encountered the stern founders of Massachusetts; at Plymouth I watched the Mayflower threading its way round the shoals and promontories of that intricate bay. On Lake George and at Quebec I followed the struggle between the English and the French for the possession of this great continent. At Boston and Concord I followed the progress of the War of Independence. At Mount Vernon I enjoyed the felicity of companionship with Washington and his associates. I pause at this great name, and carry my recollections no further. But you will understand how long and fruitful an experience has thus been added to my life, during the few weeks in which I have moved amongst the scenes of your eventful history.

And then, leaving the past for the present, a new field opens before me. There are two impressions which are fixed upon my mind as to the leading characteristics of the people among whom I have passed, as the almanac informs me, but two short months. On the one hand I see that everything seems to be fermenting and growing, changing, perplexing, bewildering. In that memorable hour--memorable in the life of every man, memorable as when he sees the first view of the Pyramids, or of the snow-clad range of the Alps--in the hour when for the first time I stood before the cataracts of Niagara, I seemed to see a vision of the fears and hopes of America. It was midnight, the moon was full, and I saw from the Suspension Bridge the ceaseless contortion, confusion, whirl, and chaos, which burst forth in clouds of foam from that immense central chasm which divides the American from the British dominion; and as I looked on that ever-changing movement, and listened to that everlasting roar, I saw an emblem of the devouring activity, and ceaseless, restless, beating whirlpool of existence in the United States. But into the moonlight sky there rose a cloud of spray twice as high as the Falls themselves, silent, majestic, immovable. In that silver column, glittering in the moonlight, I saw an image of the future of American destiny, of the pillar of light which should emerge from the distractions of the present--a likeness of the buoyancy and hopefulness which characterize you both as individuals and as a nation.

You may remember Wordsworth's fine lines on "Yarrow Unvisited," "Yarrow Visited," and "Yarrow Revisited." "America Unvisited"--that is now for me a vision of the past; that fabulous America, in which, before they come to your shores, Englishmen believe Pennsylvania to be the capital of Massachusetts, and Chicago to be a few miles from New York--that has now passed away from my mind forever. "America Visited"; this, with its historic scenes and its endless suggestions of thought, has taken the place of that fictitious region. Whether there will ever be an "America Revisited" I cannot say; but if there should be, it will then be to me not the land of the Pilgrim Fathers and Washington, so much as the land of kindly homes, and enduring friendships, and happy recollections, which have now endeared it to me. One feature of this visit I fear I cannot hope to see repeated, yet one without which it could never have been accomplished. My two friends, to whom such a pleasing reference has been made by Dr. Adams, who have made the task easy for me which else would have been impossible; who have lightened every anxiety; who have watched over me with such vigilant care that I have not been allowed to touch more than two dollars in the whole course of my journey--they, perchance, may not share in "America Revisited." But if ever such should be my own good fortune, I shall remember it as the land which I visited with them; where, if at first they were welcomed to your homes for my sake, I have often felt as the days rolled on that I was welcomed for their sake. And you will remember them. When in after years you read at the end of some elaborate essay on the history of music or on Biblical geography the name of George Grove, you will recall with pleasure the incessant questionings, the eager desire for knowledge, the wide and varied capacity for all manner of instruction, which you experienced in your conversations with him here. And when also hereafter there shall reach to your shores the fame of the distinguished physician, Dr. Harper, whether in England or in New Zealand, you will be the more rejoiced because it will bring before you the memory of the youthful and blooming student who inspected your hospitals with such keen appreciation, so impartially sifting the good from the evil.

I part from you with the conviction that such bonds of kindly intercourse will cement the union between the two countries even more than the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in England that my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field, passes his mysterious existence appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in London and in New York. Of that unbroken union there seemed to me a likeness, when on the beautiful shores of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of America, I saw a maple and an oak-tree growing together from the same stem, perhaps from the same root--the brilliant fiery maple, the emblem of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may the two nations always rise together, so different each from each, and representing so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful sap, and the same vigorous growth.

HENRY MORTON STANLEY

THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT

[Speech of Henry M. Stanley at a dinner given in his honor by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 27, 1886. Whitelaw Reid, President of the Lotos Club, in welcoming Mr. Stanley, said: "Well, gentlemen, your alarm of yesterday and last night was needless. The Atlantic Ocean would not break even a dinner engagement for the man whom the terrors of the Congo and the Nile could not turn back, and your guest is here. [Applause.] It is fourteen years since you last gave him welcome. Then he came to you fresh from the discovery of Livingstone. The credulity which even doubted the records of that adventurous march or the reality of his brilliant result had hardly died out. Our young correspondent, after seeing the war end here without his having a fair chance to win his spurs, had suddenly made a wonderful hit out of the expedition which nobody had really believed in and most people had laughed at. We were proud of him, and right glad to see him, and a little bit uneasy, but vastly amused over his peppery dealings with the Royal Geographers. [Laughter.] In spite of our admiration for his pluck and his luck we did not take him quite seriously. [Laughter.] In fact we did not take anything very seriously in those days. The Lotos Club at first was younger in that hearty enthusiastic reception to Stanley fourteen years ago in that gay little clubhouse next to the Academy of Music; we were thinking far more of a hearty greeting to the comrade of the quill who had been having a hard time but had scored 'a big beat' [laughter] than of adequate recognition to the man already well launched on a career that ranks him among the foremost explorers of the century. [Loud cheers.] It is the character in which you must welcome him now. The Royal Geographical Society has no further doubt as to the credit to which he is entitled. He brings its diploma of honorary membership ["Hear! Hear!"], he bears the gold medal of Victor Emmanuel, the decorations of the Khedive, the commission of the King of the Belgians. More than any of them he cherishes another distinction--what American would not prize it?--the vote of thanks of the Legislature and the recognition of his work by our Government. The young war-correspondent has led expeditions of his own--the man who set out merely to find Livingstone, has himself done a work greater than Livingstone's. [Applause.] He has explored Equatorial Africa, penetrated the Dark Continent from side to side, mapped the Nile, and founded the Free State on the Congo.' [Applause.] All honor to our returning guest! The years have left their marks upon his frame and their honors upon his name. Let us make him forget the fevers that have parched him, the wild beasts and the more savage men that have pursued him. ["Hear! Hear!"] He is once more among the friends of his youth, in the land of his adoption. Let us make him feel at home. [Applause.] I give you the health of our friend and comrade."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LOTOS CLUB: One might start a great many principles and ideas which would require to be illustrated and drawn out in order to present a picture of my feelings at the present moment. I am conscious that in my immediate vicinity there are people who were great when I was little. I remember very well when I was unknown to anybody, how I was sent to report a lecture by my friend right opposite, Mr. George Alfred Townsend, and I remember the manner in which he said: "Galileo said: 'The world moves round,' and the world does move round," upon the platform of the Mercantile Hall in St. Louis--one of the grandest things out. [Laughter and applause.] The next great occasion that I had to come before the public was Mark Twain's lecture on the Sandwich Islands, which I was sent to report. And when I look to my left here I see Colonel Anderson, whose very face gives me an idea that Bennett has got some telegraphic despatch and is just about to send me to some terrible region for some desperate commission. [Laughter.]

And, of course, you are aware that it was owing to the proprietor and editor of a newspaper that I dropped the pacific garb of a journalist and donned the costume of an African traveller. It was not for me, one of the least in the newspaper corps, to question the newspaper proprietor's motives. He was an able editor, very rich, desperately despotic. [Laughter.] He commanded a great army of roving writers, people of fame in the news-gathering world; men who had been everywhere and had seen everything from the bottom of the Atlantic to the top of the very highest mountain; men who were as ready to give their advice to National Cabinets [laughter] as they were ready to give it to the smallest police courts in the United States. [Laughter.] I belonged to this class of roving writers, and I can truly say that I did my best to be conspicuously great in it, by an untiring devotion to my duties, an untiring indefatigability, as though the ordinary rotation of the universe depended upon my single endeavors. [Laughter.] If, as some of you suspect, the enterprise of the able editor was only inspired with a view to obtain the largest circulation, my unyielding and guiding motive, if I remember rightly, was to win his favor by doing with all my might that duty to which according to the English State Church Catechism, "it had pleased God to call me." [Laughter and applause.]