USA > California > Addresses delivered before the California Society of the Sons of the American Revolution, 1913 > Part 4
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four sons; it was revered by George Washington. Today it is treasured at our National Mecca, Mt. Vernon, home of Washington- saved to the country some years since by its purchase by the women constituting the Mt. Vernon Association, many of them now en- rolled in the Daughters of the American Revolution and our National Society of Colonial Dames.
At thirty-five, Madam Washington was a widow, and elected so to remain at a period when "several ventures," as Augustine Wash- ington called his marriages in his will, was the custom, both for men and women-their son Samuel had five of these "ventures"- Mary Washington's mother had three.
It is said she possessed a high spirit, passionate, lofty, intense, "under the most magnificent control"-a definition of a lady. In her widowed home in Fredericksburg, where she died in her eighty- second year, her garden was her delight, and there, when the weather permitted, she prayed daily in a secluded spot. When the Army and the New Republic glorified her noted son, her constant refrain was "This is too much praise-George has only done his duty." And of that mother, whom he always addressed in his letters as "Honored Madam," he said, "All that I am, I owe to my mother!"
THE SPIRIT OF THE WEST
By Joseph F. Tuttle, Jr., A. B., LL.B., of Denver, Colorado, Hotel St. Francis, San Francisco, February 22, 1910.
It is said that it was the custom in ancient Athens, when a speaker mounted the rostrum, for his friend to sound a musical note upon his little pitch-pipe for the proper modulation of the speaker's voice. That note has been most beautifully sounded for us tonight in this paper of Mrs. Brown upon "Mary, the Mother of Wash- ington," in this distinguished gathering of the Daughters and Sons of the American Revolution, in these beautiful emblems of our be- loved society, in these National flags which are ever loving benedic- tions upon us without the laying on of hands and in these expres- sions of patriotic thought as upon this night of February 22nd we kneel at this shrine to revere the memory of George Washington. God bless to the appreciation of the American people, the rich, the sweet, the motherly personality of Mary Ball Washington, so beautifully portrayed by Mrs. Brown-Mary Ball Washington, who
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moulded the character of George Washington, which has been the standard of American character value for over a hundred years, so high, so fixed, so abiding, that no reaction has ever restricted it; so rich in its healthful profit that no loss has ever wasted it; so adorned with all the graces of well rounded, finished life, that no detraction has ever disparaged it; so affirmed with every graceful income and resource, that no envy has ever impaired it; so comely in its symmetry and beauty, that no blemish has ever tarnished the name or the fame of George Washington.
And so tonight we raise our glasses to the memory of George Washington, the soldier whose escutcheon was never tarnished with dishonor; George Washington, the patriot whose magic name is the synonym of all that is most exalted and devoted in patriotism; George Washington, the President who was twice unanimously elected to that high office, and whose incumbency of eight years is still the unit of value of all Presidential terms; George Washington, the citizen who waved back an offered crown; George Washington the Statesman who laid deep and broad the foundations of the Republic ; George Washington, the incomparable American whose brow the graceful laurel could honor no more; George Washington, the Father of his County; and, from the depths of our loving hearts, we add tonight as we have listened to this charming tribute of the preceding speaker, George Washington, the son of Mary Ball Washington, the high priestess, the tutelary Goddess, the beautiful ideal of the Amer- ican Home! I had thought to offer a few thoughts tonight upon "Washington and the American Home." They will not now be neces- sary, as nothing could so beautifully emphasize the home as the great source of our national strength as these words to which we have lis- tened tonight.
If the "Man without a country" excites our pity, how much more so should the man without a subject! And will you pardon one further word from the stranger within your gates tonight? It is said that the beauty of Helen of Troy was so bewitching that the Temple the Greeks built to her possessed the magic power of bestow- ing beauty of spirit upon all who entered it. Such are my thoughts as I have today for the first time entered your beautiful city-an enchanted land to me, literally the land of my dreams. My very earliest recollections are of a certain day in the old home in the Jersey hills, when all the family tribes assembled to bid farewell to my mother's two brothers, who were setting out for the Land by the "Golden Gate," and who arrived where San Francisco stands in the early months of 1850. And so with these home memories
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thrumming at my heart chords tonight, with you I love this city, the beautiful sanctuary of the new spirit of San Francisco; a spirit that is as virile today as if it had flesh and blood; a spirit that is the fine residuum in the retort of the brain, the heart and hand of the old Argonauts of '49; a spirit that does not walk around its difficulties, but goes straight through them, and upon its own feet, as witness the beautiful resurrection of this new city by the western sea, from its ruins of 1906; a spirit that puts passion in the sluggish pulses and quickens the deadened senses that we may hear as the pioneers and Argonauts of '49 heard in these western skies-the music of those
"Wild pulsations we felt before the strife,
"When we had our days before us and the tumult of our life."
Like a fiery magnet this new spirit of San Francisco is attracting the attention of an admiring world today. In the Masonic touch that makes the world akin; in the triumphs of the hour when San Fran- cisco is coming to her own, as to a kingdom of honor and profit she has made for herself in the great commercial world; in the new great domain of work, with its inviting new fields of the shop, the mine, and the soil; in the awakening interest of the citizen in the civic and social reforms of the day ;- in all these and more, this new spirit is waiting to touch the heart with the electric thrill of the people you are going to be !
But most of all we love this new spirit, this spirit of the West, because it is the irresistible charmer with magic music in its heart of the new and better day that is to be; music that is throbbing with the blood and passion of a little fugitive anonymous poem I found in a paper many years ago. May I tender you its hopeful philosophy as the greetings from my confreres from the Colorado society ?
"Oh! the Fly-Away-Bird is swift of wing, And swift and high is he, And he flies as high in the blue of the sky, As any birds that be; And fleet of foot is the lusty man,
As swift as a winged word, Who without default would sprinkle with salt The tail of the Fly-Away-Bird.
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"But we all chase after the Fly-Away-Bird, O'er river and mountain and dale, Till we think in an hour we'll have the power To sprinkle salt on his tail;
But since the base of the planet was laid, And the morning stars were heard,
No fortunate fellow has ever felt the mellow Bright plumes of the Fly-Away-Bird.
"For the Fly-Away-Bird is our own bright dream, "Tis the hope that is born in man : Then follow it afar to the uttermost star,
The clear blue's farthest span :
And the man who has no Fly-Away-Bird Is of mortals most forlorn ;
'Twere better that he be cast in the sea, Or that he'd never been born.
"See ! he lights up there on the crags of hope, And his wings, they gleam in the sun
With the gorgeous dyes of the sunset skies, When the summer day is done.
And though this bird was never caged In a narrower cage than the sky, Whoso is deterred from following that bird, 'Tis time for that man to die.
"Then up and away for the Fly-Away-Bird, Let us lead him a jolly good race : And let every man know that the bird that flies low Is no kind of a bird to chase. Then up and away for the Fly-Away-Bird,
Though he pierce the depths of the sky, Let him understand with the salt in our hand, We'll chase him to the day that we die."
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THE LAST BATTLE OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
By George C. Pardee, M. D., Ex-Governor California, at Key Route Inn, Oakland, August 27, 1910.
One hundred and twenty-seven years is not a very long time in the history of a nation. And yet, sitting around this table tonight to celebrate an event that occurred one hundred and twenty-seven years ago, we look back to the beginnings of our nation, and through several generations of ancestors. And as we do so, I hope there is not one of us who does not appreciate the patriotism, the unswerv- ing fidelity to truth, to personal and national honor, that made nearly every man who was an inhabitant of this country at that time a patriot willing and ready to lay down his life, if the necessity arose, for that liberty which we today possess. As we look back upon it, we must not forget that the last battle that was fought in that great struggle, one hundred and twenty-seven years ago today, did not finally establish the liberty of our people, did not give us the nation which we have today. Those who fought that battle, and those who were then the people of this country, thought that the war was over, and that liberty was then theirs and their successors. But liberty is a thing that must always be fought for. There are traitors in times of peace as there are traitors in times of war, and there are enemies to the public good in times of peace as there are in times of war. And so we today, the successors of those men who fought and bled and starved and froze in the days of the revolution, we, their successors, their grandsons, their great grand-sons, and even their great-great- grandsons, must bear in mind that we have a battle to fight, that we have a sword to draw in time of peace as they had in time of war. And so, when we sit around this table here tonight celebrating that skirmish -for it was nothing more than a skirmish that occurred after the war of the revolution was over and had been settled for all time, we must not forget that we also have the burden and heat of battle to bear, and that there are more than mere skirmishes in which we must take our part.
I have often been struck with the patriotism of the men and women who look back at their forefathers and are proud to bear the name which we bear as members of this Society. It is said that it is foreign to the legends and history of this country that we should carry
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those memories of our forefathers. And yet it is a heritage of which we are all proud, it is a heritage which should cause us to follow the patriotic examples of our Revolutionary forefathers. I take it that there is not one of us who does not look with pride upon the deeds of those who went before him. I take it that there is not one of us who does not cherish the memories of the great men of this country. No nation can long be free, no nation ought long to be free, that does not cherish in its heart of hearts the memories of its great men, and does not celebrate the recurring anniversaries of the great events in its history. Such celebrations as we are hold- ing here tonight kindle and keep alive in the hearts of those who participate in them the fires of patriotism, and make better men of those who take part in them.
Compatriots, remember that our forefathers, bearing the old flint lock muskets, unfed, unpaid, unclothed, unshod, starving and freezing, fought for the liberties which we enjoy, fought for the liberties for which we must fight, fought for the things which we enjoy, fought for the things for which we must fight in time of war and in time of peace, fought for the things which the great men of this country have fought for, fought for the things which our children will have, only if we are jealous of the things our forefathers gave us-the things which, unto the end of time, all Americans will enjoy if the mem- bers of this Society and other good American citizens treasure in their hearts the memories of the men and the deeds and the times of the American Revolution.
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WHAT TIME IS IT, AND WHERE ARE WE?
By Rev. Thomas A. Boyer, at Key Route Inn, Oakland, California, August 27, 1910.
There comes to me a story of some young men who had chartered a car somewhere on an interurban line across the country, in order to attend a meeting of an alumni association of which they were all members. By some inadvertence an old man clambered aboard this car and successfully stowed himself away from the observation of these young chaps for some considerable time. At length, however, when liquid-cheer refreshments had been served a time or two, one of these young fellows spied the old man and propounded to him the inquiry as whether or not he belonged to the alumni association, and to which the old man replied, "I am not a member, but I be- lieve in it."
I haven't the honor of belonging to the organization that is gathered here tonight, yet I beg you to believe me when I tell you that my heart beats in harmony with this and all kindred organizations seek- ing to keep alive in the minds and hearts of the people of our times, the spirit and purpose of the olden times. And I want tonight, in order, if possible, that we may sense a little more clearly what that spirit and purpose was, to call your attention to its natural offspring, our heritage.
The age of which we are a part, among other things, is designated as an age of great questions. And without doubt, that designation is a true one. It is an age of great questions; questions relating to the black man, the brown man, to colonies and dependencies, to capital and labor, to the functions of federated trades and labor unions, etc .; in a word, questions relating to all sorts of subjects, the most cursory contemplation of which reminds one of the charge of the light brigade :
"Cannon to the right of them, Cannon to the left of them, Volleyed and thundered."
Or DeMorgan's description of the prolific flea, when he says :
"Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite 'em,
And these again have lesser still, and so ad infinitum, The great fleas themselves have greater fleas to go on,
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And these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on."
Or the woman on the street car with a great bunch of children huddled about, who when she was interrogated by the conductor as to whether the children all belonged to her, or if it were a picnic, re- plied, "No, sir, these children are all mine, I'll have you to under- stand, and it's no picnic."
And yet, gentlemen, I apprehend I will have no difficulty in secur- ing a verdict in the affirmative here tonight, when I allege that of all the questions that like dandelion blossoms, are breaking into bloom upon the bank and shoal of modern life, none of them are equal in importance to the question that lies back of and comprehends them all, namely, the question of our modern times in their relation to all other times.
Theodore Parker said: "When a man looks through a telescope toward a star, the biggest star is always at the little end of the telescope."
Carlyle said: "The present age-the youngest born of all eter- nity, the child and heir of all the past, the parent of all the ages yet to be-is ever a 'New Era' to the thinking man. To know it, and what it bids us do is ever the sum of knowledge for us all."
Why, without a knowledge of our times and their relation to all other times, the world of events disintegrates and life resolves itself into a species of somnambulism; it becomes a game of blind man's buff, in which all effort is as idle and unavailing as the effort of the man who tries to shake hands with himself in the mirror at the merchants' exchange. Or as was Abraham Lincoln's recommenda- tion of a certain book, when he was importuned for some helpful word of commendation on the part of some pestering agent. He wrote, "For the sort of people who will like this kind of a book, this is the kind of a book that sort of people will like." Or Herbert Spencer's definition of evolution. He says: "Evolution is a change from an indefinite, incoherent heterogeneity to a definite, coherent homogeneity, through continuous differentiations and interrogations."
Now, if you don't understand that, I'm sorry for you.
And yet, do you know that the one thing about which most of us are negligent and lacking is exact information, in this very funda- mental thing-our own whereabouts.
We have automobiles and the Australian ballot system and Dr. Williams' pink pills for pale people. We have wireless telegraphy, smokeless powder, horseless carriages and liquid air; we cut our clothing according to the latest Paris fashion plate, we are orthordox in religion, gold standard in politics; we have 20th century systems
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of teaching cube-root and compound fractions, we have great tele- scopes that make the canals on the planet Mars look like the paths that lead to the drug stores in prohibition towns. And yet when it comes to a historic and scientific acquaintance with our own times, with a depth of conviction that comes of conscious innocence, most of us can say, "Search me."
Our condition of mind doesn't differ very materially from that of the little fellow at Sunday school who, when in answer to his inquiry, as to what nationality a little boy would belong who was born at sea, he was told by his Sunday school teacher that he would be- long to the nationality of his father and mother, of course, replied : "Yes, but suppose his father and mother weren't along, and he was traveling with his uncle."
One of the first theories that the aspirant for sociological honors encounters as he comes knocking at the closed door of the present inquiring as to its parentage, its social preferences or its moral and spiritual health, is the one that is held by the man who walks on the shady side of the street, who enjoys bad health; the man who looks at life through jaundiced eyes, who has a nose for sewer gas, and whose philosophy of life is suggested by the declaration of an over affrighted Sunday school lad who was called upon suddenly to recite some verse of scripture immediately following the declara- tion on the part of one of his fellow classmates to the effect that "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear," and who astonished the whole school by blurting out, "He that hath a nose to smell, let him smell."
According to this form of philosophizing, our age, when matched against the other golden ages of history which lie and shimmer in the background of the past like the aftermath of a poet's dream, is an age of paint and paraffine, of dabble and dilettanteism-an age of disintegration and decay. An age that suggests Oliver Wendell Holmes' characterization of a certain phase of social life, which he described as a thing of "Gabble and gobble and git." In a word, that human progress is a most striking illustration of the nebular hypothesis reversed. That instead of everything coming from fire- mist, it is going the other way.
One of the somberest characterizations of contemporary life that I have noticed is a recent contribution that was made by an eminent member of the local judiciary in a volume entitled "A Pack of Cards and a Joker" in which he alleges that as there was an age of stone, an age of bronze and of iron, so our age will be known in history as the "Flippant age." In attempting to sustain this allegation, he
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charges that there is "No more any rest, no babbling brooks, no more are the cows coming home from the meadows in the evening time, the sweet low music of the tinkling bells filling all the shadowy landscape. No more the berries and the cream with the good old fashioned mothers sitting at the head of the table saying, 'Won't you please pass up your plate again.' Our sweet gentle lady mothers, where are they ? Most women belong to clubs and give five o'clock teas today. Who writes anything and who reads what is written? You wouldn't sit an evening out with Hamlet now, and if you did you wouldn't understand him, and as for Richelieu, who cares for him? We go to see, and shriek our merriment over 'All coons look alike to me,' and 'I don't like no cheap man.""'
This somber-visaged doctrine of fault-finding is no New Thought disclosure, neither are its devotees all able to "Look through a key-hole with both eyes at the same time without being cross-eyed." The fact of the matter is, it is one of the oldest forms of philosophizing concerning which there is any historic record. It is an attempt at in- terpretation compared to which that vast ecclesiasticism referred to by Macaulay as "Great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain or the Frank had crossed the Rhine. While yet Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, and pagan idols still held captive those who made solemn pilgrimages to the temple at Mecca," seems as bright and fresh and new as a modern motor-car with its miracle of mechanism and red paint.
Alonzo of Aragon said that "Age is to be recommended in four things, old wood to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust and old books to read." And he might have added, "Old times to dream about." In the central depths of all human consciousness so it would seem, there is an oasis of memory upon which the tears of af- fection are ever falling to refresh it and keep it green within us.
"O for the old times, we stretch across the distance, Eager, yearning hands, hot with the heart's desire. O vanished days, how fair they seem with colors Mixed with imagination's holy fire.
"O for the old friends, their faults are still forgotten. From the far past, their glances woo us bright, As the fixed stars that mock our aspirations, Set in the purple palpitating night."
For one however, I have no word of encomium for the man who goes about with the corners of his mouth pulled down, and who feels
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called, sent and qualified, upon the slightest of pretexts, to make use of a little hammer that he always carries about with him in conse- quence of which, he has gained for himself the unenviable sobriquet, "The man who knocks."
Granted if you will, that we have not yet learned how to suc- cessfully curb and control the instincts of the beast that are within us; that in relation to the problem of representative government, we are still in the gristle period. Granted, that we still have trusts and tramps, that our army is an army of lions led by jackasses, that be- neath the gilded exterior of silk tiles, and Parisian phylacteries we all have troubles that we never tell to the policeman. Granted, that there are specters a plenty that the hum of machinery and the glare of the electric lights haven't been able to banish from our streets. In a word, granted that all we hear about the demagoguery and defalca- tion of our times is true, in the language of good old Sir Isaac Newton who exclaimed upon reading Milton's Paradise Lost, "What does it prove."
Pepys' diary, published three or four hundred years ago in London, portrays a remonstrance against evils in excess of any that we know. The German reformation of the 16th century was a remonstrance against sins more sinister of aspect than our own.
So it is all the way along. Pessimism is a cheap papier-mache form of philosophizing, a form of philosophizing that won't stand the test of true scientific and historical analysis. The only two influences that operate to make a man a pessimist, are a disordered physical anatomy, or a lack of acquaintance with the facts.
One of the fundamental weaknesses of all comparative historical inquiry is the universal tendency to magnify the past. It is always twilight in the land of memory. One of the strange paradoxes of all progress is that no man arrives until after his departure. We now know that not one half the things attributed to the past ever hap- pened in reality.
Take if you will, the story of Romulus and Remus the founders of the Eternal city. We now know that there were no wolf chil- dren. The mythological romance of Paris and the beautiful Helen has lost its power to please in this age of electric lights. Why, Paris was sixty years old before he ever set eyes on the beautiful Helen, if, perchance, such a personage as she ever existed at all, and even in the heroic age of the world people were slightly passe at the age of sixty. We now know, that Queen Elizabeth of England was not the good Queen Bess that we have been led to think she was, but that on the contrary she was a woman given much to deception and false-
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