Part 20
Just as the happiest and most honorable and most useful task that can be set any man is to earn enough for the support of his wife and family, for the bringing up and starting in life of his children, so the most important, the most honorable and desirable task which can be set any woman is to be a good and wise mother in a home marked by self-respect and mutual forbearance, by willingness to perform duty, and by refusal to sink into self-indulgence or avoid that which entails effort and self-sacrifice. Of course, there are exceptional men and exceptional women who can do and ought to do much more than this, who can lead and ought to lead great careers of outside usefulness in addition to—not as substitute for—their home work; but I am not speaking of exceptions; I am speaking of the primary duties, I am speaking of the average citizens, the average men and women who make up the Nation.
Inasmuch as I am speaking to an assemblage of mothers I shall have nothing whatever to say in praise of an easy life. Yours is the work which is never ended. No mother has an easy time, and most mothers have very hard times; and yet what true mother would barter her experience of joy and sorrow in exchange for a life of cold selfishness, which insists upon perpetual amusement and the avoidance of care, and which often finds its fit dwelling-place in some flat designed to furnish with the least possible expenditure of effort the maximum of comfort and of luxury, but in which there is literally no place for children?
The woman who is a good wife, a good mother, is entitled to our respect as is no one else; but she is entitled to it only because, and so long as, she is worthy of it. Effort and self-sacrifice are the law of worthy life for the man as for the woman; though neither the effort nor the self-sacrifice may be the same for the one as for the other. I do not in the least believe in the patient Griselda type of woman, in the woman who submits to gross and long-continued ill-treatment, any more than I believe in a man who tamely submits to wrongful aggression. No wrongdoing is so abhorrent as wrongdoing by a man toward the wife and the children who should arouse every tender feeling in his nature. Selfishness toward them, lack of tenderness toward them, lack of consideration for them, above all, brutality in any form toward them, should arouse the heartiest scorn and indignation in every upright soul.
I believe in the woman’s keeping her self-respect just as I believe in the man’s doing so. I believe in her rights just as much as I believe in the man’s, and indeed a little more; and I regard marriage as a partnership in which each partner is in honor bound to think of the rights of the other as well as of his or her own. But I think that the duties are even more important than the rights; and in the long run I think that the reward is ampler and greater for duty well done than for the insistence upon individual rights, necessary though this, too, must often be. Your duty is hard, your responsibility great; but greatest of all is your reward. I do not pity you in the least. On the contrary, I feel respect and admiration for you.
Into the woman’s keeping is committed the destiny of the generations to come after us. In bringing up your children you mothers must remember that while it is essential to be loving and tender it is no less essential to be wise and firm. Foolishness and affection must not be treated as interchangeable terms; and besides training your sons and daughters in the softer and milder virtues you must seek to give them those stern and hardy qualities which in after life they will surely need. Some children will go wrong in spite of the best training; and some will go right even when their surroundings are most unfortunate; nevertheless an immense amount depends upon the family training. If you mothers through weakness bring up your sons to be selfish and to think only of themselves, you will be responsible for much sadness among the women who are to be their wives in the future. If you let your daughters grow up idle, perhaps under the mistaken impression that as you yourselves have had to work hard they shall know only enjoyment, you are preparing them to be useless to others and burdens to themselves. Teach boys and girls alike that they are not to look forward to lives spent in avoiding difficulties but to lives spent in overcoming difficulties. Teach them that work, for themselves and also for others, is not a curse but a blessing; seek to make them happy, to make them enjoy life, but seek also to make them face life with the steadfast resolution to wrest success from labor and adversity, and to do their whole duty before God and to man. Surely she who can thus train her sons and her daughters is thrice fortunate among women.
There are many good people who are denied the supreme blessing of children, and for these we have the respect and sympathy always due to those who, from no fault of their own, are denied any of the other great blessings of life. But the man or woman who deliberately foregoes these blessings, whether from viciousness, coldness, shallow-heartedness, self-indulgence, or mere failure to appreciate aright the difference between the all-important and the unimportant—why, such a creature merits contempt as hearty as any visited upon the soldier who runs away in battle, or upon the man who refuses to work for the support of those dependent upon him, and who though able-bodied is yet content to eat in idleness the bread which others provide.
The existence of women of this type forms one of the most unpleasant and unwholesome features of modern life. If any one is so dim of vision as to fail to see what a thoroughly unlovely creature such a woman is I wish they would read Judge Robert Grant’s novel “Unleavened Bread,” ponder seriously the character of Selma, and think of the fate that would surely overcome any nation which developed its average and typical woman along such lines. Unfortunately it would be untrue to say that this type exists only in American novels. That it also exists in American life is made unpleasantly evident by the statistics as to the dwindling families in some localities. It is made evident in equally sinister fashion by the census statistics as to divorce, which are fairly appalling; for easy divorce is now, as it ever has been, a bane to any nation, a curse to society, a menace to the home, an incitement to married unhappiness and to immorality, an evil thing for men and a still more hideous evil for women. These unpleasant tendencies in our American life are made evident by articles such as those which I actually read not long ago in the “Independent,” where a clergyman was quoted, seemingly with approval, as expressing the general American attitude when he said that the ambition of any save a very rich man should be to rear two children only, so as to give his children an opportunity “to taste a few of the good things of life.” This man, whose profession and calling should have made him a moral teacher, writing in what is professedly a religious paper, actually set before others the ideal, not of training children to do their duty, not of sending them forth with stout hearts and ready minds to win triumphs for themselves and their country, not of allowing them the opportunity and giving them the privilege of making their own place in the world, but, forsooth, of keeping the number of children so limited that they might “taste a few good things!” The way to give a child a fair chance in life is not to bring it up in luxury, but to see that it has the kind of training that will give it strength of character. Even apart from the vital question of national life, and regarding only the individual interest of the children themselves, happiness in the true sense is a hundredfold more apt to come to any given member of a healthy family of healthy-minded children, well brought up, well educated, but taught that they must shift for themselves, must win their own way, and by their own exertions make their own positions of usefulness, than it is apt to come to those whose parents themselves have acted on and have trained their children to act on, the selfish and sordid theory that the whole end of life is “to taste a few good things.”
The intelligence of the remark is on a par with its morality, for the most rudimentary mental process would have shown the speaker that if the average family in which there are children contained but two children the Nation as a whole would decrease in population so rapidly that in two or three generations it would very deservedly be on the point of extinction, so that the people who had acted on this base and selfish doctrine would be giving place to others with braver and more robust ideals. Nor would such a result be in any way regrettable; for a race that practiced such doctrine—that is, a race that practiced race suicide—would thereby conclusively show that it was unfit to exist, and that it had better give place to people who had not forgotten the primary laws of their being.
To sum up, then, the whole matter is simple enough. If either a race or an individual prefers the pleasures of mere effortless ease, of self-indulgence, to the infinitely deeper, the infinitely higher pleasures that come to those who know the toil and the weariness, but also the joy, of hard duty well done, why, that race or that individual must inevitably in the end pay the penalty of leading a life both vapid and ignoble. No man and no woman really worthy of the name can care for the life spent solely or chiefly in the avoidance of risk and trouble and labor. Save in exceptional cases the prizes worth having in life must be paid for, and the life worth living must be a life of work for a worthy end, and ordinarily of work more for others than for one’s self.
The man is but a poor creature whose effort is not rather for the betterment of his wife and children than for himself; and as for the mother, her very name stands for loving unselfishness and self-abnegation, and, in any society fit to exist, is fraught with associations which render it holy.
The woman’s task is not easy—no task worth doing is easy—but in doing it, and when she has done it, there shall come to her the highest and holiest joy known to mankind; and having done it, she shall have the reward prophesied in Scripture; for her husband and her children, yes, and all people who realize that her work lies at the foundation of all national happiness and greatness, shall rise up and call her blessed.
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDLY SONS OF ST. PATRICK, DELMONICO’S, NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 17, 1905
It is, of course, a matter of peculiar pleasure to me to come to my own city and to meet so many men with whom I have been associated for the last quarter of a century—for it was nearly that time ago, Judge, that you and I first met when we were both in the New York Legislature together—and to be greeted by you as you have greeted me to-night. I wish to express at the outset my special sense of obligation—and I know that the rest of you will not grudge my expressing it—my special sense of obligation to Colonel Duffy and the officers and men of the Sixty-ninth, who were my escort to-day. I shall write to Colonel Duffy later, to give him formal notice, and to ask him to give the regiment formal notice, of my appreciation, but I wish to express it thus publicly to-night.
And now, before I begin my speech proper, I wish to read a telegram which has been handed to me as a sop to certain of my well-known prejudices. It has been sent up to me by one of the members here to-night, who when we came into the dining-room was only a father, but who at this moment is a grandfather. This telegram runs as follows:
“Peter McDonnell, Friendly Sons’ Dinner, Delmonico’s. Patrick just arrived. Tired after parade. Sends his regards to the President. He is the first on record since the President attended the Friendly Sons’ dinner. He is a fine singer. No race suicide in this family. Weighs eight pounds, looks like the whole family. The mother is doing well. Robert McDonnell.”
And, gentlemen, I want you to join with me in drinking the health of Patrick, Peter, Robert, and above all, of the best of the whole outfit, Mrs. McDonnell, the mother.
Now we will pass from the present to the past. The Judge has spoken to you of the formation of the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in Philadelphia, in colonial days. It was natural that it should have started in Philadelphia and at the time of which the Judge spoke. For we must not forget, in dealing with our history as a Nation, that long before the outbreak of the Revolution there had begun on the soil of the colonies, which afterward became the United States, that mixture of races which has been and still is one of the most important features in our history as a people. At the time, early in the eighteenth century, when the immigrants from Ireland first began to come in numbers to this country, the race elements were still imperfectly fused, and for some time the then new Irish strain was clearly distinguishable from the others. And there was one peculiarity about these immigrants who came from Ireland to the colonies in the eighteenth century which has never been paralleled in the case of any other immigrants whatsoever. In all other cases since the very first settlements, the pushing westward of the frontier, the conquest of the Continent has been due primarily to the men of native birth. But the immigrants from Ireland in the eighteenth century, and those alone, pushed boldly through the settled districts and planted themselves as the advance guard of the conquering civilization on the borders of the Indian-haunted wilderness.
This was true in Northern Maine and New Hampshire, in Western Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas alike. And, inasmuch as Philadelphia was the largest city which was in touch with that extreme Western frontier, it was most natural that the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick should first be formed in that city. We had, I wish to say, in New York, frequently during colonial days, dinners of societies of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, but apparently the society in New York did not take a permanent form; but we frequently had dinners on March 17 of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick here in New York City even in colonial days.
By the time the Revolution had broken out, the men of different race strains had begun to fuse together, and the Irish among those strains furnished their full share of leadership in the struggle. Among their number was Commodore John Barry, one of the two or three officers to whom our infant Navy owed most. I had the honor in the last session of Congress to recommend that a monument to Barry should be erected in Washington. I heartily believe in economy, but I think we can afford to let up enough to let that monument through.
On land, the men of this strain furnished generals like Montgomery, who fell so gloriously at Quebec, and like Sullivan, the conqueror of the Iroquois, who came of a New Hampshire family, which furnished governors to three New England States. In her old age, the mother, Mrs. Sullivan, used to say that she had known what it was to work hard in the fields carrying in her arms the Governor of Massachusetts, with the Governors of New Hampshire and Vermont tagging on at her skirts.
I have spoken of the generals. Now for the rank and file. The Continental troops of the hardest fighter among Washington’s generals, Mad Anthony Wayne, were recruited so largely from this stock that Lighthorse Harry Lee of Virginia, the father of the great general, Robert Lee, always referred to them as “The Line of Ireland.” Nor must we forget that of this same stock there was a boy during the days of the Revolution who afterward became the chief American general of his time, and, as President, one of the public men who left his impress most deeply upon our Nation, Andrew Jackson, the victor of New Orleans.
The Revolution was the first great crisis of our history. The Civil War was the second. And in this second great crisis the part played by the men of Irish birth or parentage was no less striking than it had been in the Revolution. Among the three or four great generals who led the Northern Army in the war, stood Phil Sheridan. Some of those whom I am now addressing served in that immortal brigade which on the fatal day of Fredericksburg left its dead closest to the stonewall which marked the limit that could not be overpassed even by the highest valor.
And, gentlemen, it was my good fortune when it befell me to serve as a regimental commander in a very small war—but all the war there was—to have under me more than one of the sons of those who served in Meagher’s brigade. Among them was one of my two best captains, both of whom were killed, Allen Capron, and this man Bucky O’Neill. Bucky O’Neill was killed at Santiago, showing the same absolute indifference to life, the same courage, the same gallant readiness to sacrifice everything on the altar of an ideal, that his father had shown when he died in Meagher’s brigade in the Civil War.
The people who have come to this country from Ireland have contributed to the stock of our common citizenship qualities which are essential to the welfare of every great nation. They are a masterful race of rugged character, a race the qualities of whose womanhood have become proverbial, while its men have the elemental, the indispensable virtues of working hard in time of peace and fighting hard in time of war.
And I want to say here, as I have said and shall say again elsewhere, as I shall say again and again, that we must never forget that no amount of material wealth, no amount of intellect, no artistic or scientific growth can avail anything to the nation which loses the elemental virtues. If the average man can not work and fight, the race is in a poor way; and it will not have, because it will not deserve, the respect of any one.
Let us avoid always, either as individuals or as a Nation, brawling, speaking discourteously or acting offensively toward others, but let us make it evident that we wish peace, not because we are weak, but because we think it right; and that while we do not intend to wrong any one, we are perfectly competent to hold our own if any one wrongs us. There has never been a time in this country when it has not been true of the average American of Irish birth or parentage, that he came up to this standard, able to work and able to fight at need.
But the men of Irish birth or of Irish descent have been far more than soldiers—I will not say more than, but much in addition to, soldiers. In every walk in life in this country men of this blood have stood and now stand pre-eminent, not only as soldiers but as statesmen, on the bench, at the bar, and in business. They are doing their full share toward the artistic and literary development of the country.
And right here let me make a special plea to you, to this society and kindred societies: We Americans take a just pride in the development of our great universities, and more and more we are seeking to provide for creative and original work in these universities. I hope that an earnest effort will be made to endow chairs in American universities for the study of Celtic literature and for research in Celtic antiquities. It is only of recent years that the extraordinary wealth and beauty of the old Celtic Sagas have been fully appreciated, and we of America, who have so large a Celtic strain in our blood, can not afford to be behindhand in the work of adding to modern scholarship by bringing within its ken the great Celtic literature of the past.
My fellow-countrymen, I have spoken to-night especially of what has been done for this Nation of ours by men of Irish blood. But, after all, in speaking to you, or, to any other body of my fellow-citizens, no matter from what Old World country they themselves or their forefathers may have come, the great thing is to remember that we are all of us Americans. Let us keep our pride in the stocks from which we have sprung, but let us show that pride, not by holding aloof from one another, least of all by preserving the Old World jealousies and bitternesses, but by joining in a spirit of generous rivalry to see which can do most for our great common country.
Americanism is not a matter of creed or birthplace or descent. That man is the best American who has in him the American spirit, the American soul. Such a man fears not the strong and harms not the weak. He scorns what is base or cruel or dishonest. He looks beyond the accidents of occupation or social condition and hails each of his fellow-citizens as his brother, asking nothing save that each shall treat the other on his worth as a man, and that they shall all join together to do what in them lies for the uplifting of this mighty and vigorous people. In our veins runs the blood of many an Old World nation. We are kin to each of these nations and yet identical with none.
Our policy should be one of cordial friendship for them all, and yet we should keep ever before our eyes the fact that we are ourselves a separate people with our own ideals and standards, and destined, whether for better or for worse, to work out a wholly new national type. The fate of the twentieth century will in no small degree—I ask you to think of this from the standpoint of the world—the fate of the twentieth century as it bears on the world will in no small degree depend upon the type of citizenship developed on this Continent. Surely such a thought must thrill us with the resolute purpose so to bear ourselves that the name American shall stand as the symbol of just, generous, and fearless treatment of all men and all nations. Let us be true to ourselves, for we can not then be false to any man.
ADDRESS AT THE DINNER OF THE SONS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, HOTEL ASTOR, NEW YORK CITY, MARCH 17, 1905
_Ladies and Gentlemen_: