The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, April 19, 1896, Page 18

18 e THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, APRIL 19, 1896. THE- LION IN ,THE PATH. JOAQUIN MILLER TALKS TO THE MEMBERS OF THE WOMEN'S CHRISTIAN T the session of the tri-county convention of the Women's| Christian Temperance Union, | held at Pacific Grove on FKriday | evening, Joaquin Miller delivered a lecture on “Prohibition.” As might have been expected, the poet treated the question in an original and entertaining manner. A full report of the lecture, revised by Mr. Miller especially for THE CaLr, follows: There is a difference between women and men--a wide difference — mentally, moraily, as well as physically. But what woman loses in one thing she more than makes up in another. What she lacks in weight she more than ~makes up in fineness. What she lacksin strength she more than makes up in true courage, Woman is by far the braver of the two sexes. True, man has kept the record of his brave butcheries, and it is equally true that he has credited all the courage to himself. The one great soul that shed more luster on the pages of French history than even Napoieon the Great was a woman, but men could not bear that. They bound her to the stake. And so it has been from the dawn of history, on down past the shining example of Queen Esther—on down, down, down to this age, this day, this hour, to the head of this movement—io Susan B. Anthony. I have been in many wars, many hard battles, but those were glorious, exciting days and deeds. What so splenaid, de- lightful as to dash into the fight that can Jast but a day at longest, and, end as it may be, come victory or defeat, man has only to bear himself bravely and leave the rest to Him. But it is the long, Jong fignt, and aione, such as that brave woman has made—the fight of a lifetime for an idea—that is the true test of courage. The cold neglect, the cruel scorn, the defeat day after day, year after year, from the dawn of womanhood | o the verge of the grave, the cowardly faltering of men who promise one thing and periorm another, weak men who pre- fer po pularity to principle—this it is that makes woman's lifelong battles so terrible. Woman as a rule instinctively knows | what is right and she generally dares to do | it. Man, by reason as a rule, knows what is right and often is afraid or forgets to do it. Iam sorry, ashamed of him, but I did not make him. ‘‘Male and female created We them.” It is this patient persistence of woman that shows the true steel, that requires a higher and a holier type of courage than man has ever shown with all his bloody butcheries. Woman’s courage is the | courage of Jesus Christ, who said, “Put up thy sword into its place,” and so was led away to contumely and crucifixion. Shall I | ‘ell you where you will find the bravest | battie-field in all history ? | The bravest battle that ever was fought, Shall I tell you where and when? On the maps of th- wor'd you will find it not; It was fought by the mothers of men. Nay. not with cannon or battle shot, With sword or with nobler pen: Nay, not with wonderful word or thought, From mouths of eloguent men. But deep in a walled-up woman's heart, A woman that wouid not yield, | But patiently. silently bore her part; Lo, there is that battlefield. TEMPERANCE UNION. they have no hnorses, and I told him the women of California were going to vote some day. He took his cigar out of his teeth and said: ‘'Bosh! The only people that ever knew how to bandle woman were the Turks. They that they put a few of her into a sack and threw it over the side of a boat.”” I agreed with him at that time. But one of the few advantages the American man has over the Englishman and a mule is the possibility of changing his mind. Last spring my old English friend came up from Australia. *‘Well, women got it in New Zealand— got suffrage in spite of us all,” he said, the first thing. “And how do you like it ?"* “Detestable! Ruins Political business— dull as a meatax. Why, the elections used to be all carried on in the saloonsand money flowed like water, Now all a can- didate has to do is to go among the wo- men, have clean habits and good manners and he is elected. Of course it’s cheaper for the towns; don’t cost half as much to run a town as before. Some make more in the eud. But sportis ruined. An election down there is like a California flower show.’’ Now, this is the testimony of a man who has made a fortune in liquors—a good man, truthful, honest, says in substance the machinery of elec- tions has been transferred from the dead- falls to the family fireside; that power has passed from the politician to the sacred keeping of woman; that it don’t cost half as much to run a town as it did, but that the liquor business on election days is dull. ‘Well, if woman can take the place oi the tician in any part of Australia she can o0 it in California. If woman can by her better influence run the towns in Califor- Jocked her up, and if she did not like | my friend. He | ! Napoleon always first pierced the center, He first _split the army in two and then thrashed this side and then that. Now deceive no one, least of all your- selves. But 1f you want to put yourselves in position to handle the affairs of this State, as I hope you will, you will not fight the lion in your path fill you have the power to fight with in your own hands. You will rather say with Mrs. Browning, ‘“'Twere imbecile hewing out roads to a wall.” However brave it may sound tosay “Fight on and on and on and fall and perish in the ruins,”’ it is not good sense and 1t does no good to be cruci- lied unless you are saviors. I am not here to advise. ‘I am here to tell you some blunt truths, and I tell you that if you were to dig up every vine in Catifornia to-morrow, flood and make red with wine everK river and lake in Califor- nia, next year the vines would graw again, and the next and the next, though you should destroy them the next and ‘the next, and they would ggow and glow in the sun of California above your graves il::;: little time the same as if you had never n, God made this hot sun and God made that soil, and the grapes will grow and the wine will flow as long as this sun and soil endures, although, as John Hayes says, ‘‘you resolute till the cows come home.” There is your first great lion. What will you do with him? True, now and then a wine-grower feels, as perhaps half of you do, that “wineis a mocker and strong drink is raging,” and s0 bravely plows up his last grapevine and plants something else. 5 ‘When I lecturea at Napa not long since a well-to-do farmer was pointed out to me who had plowed up his last grapevine only the year before. He had become converted while listening to the Salvation Army, and he went home and told his wife, and they both joined the church, and they not only plowed up the 1ast vine but they actu- ally emptied the last cask of wine on the premises, for they were rich and not under | the bond of mortgage. They would not | even sell it. These two truly Christian converts did not want—would not touch— money that was made by furnishing in- toxicating drinks, Having plowed up the grapes from | which wine was made, they planted hops No marshaling troop, no bivouac song, No banners to gleam and wave, And ah, these battles they last 50 long, From babyhood to the grave. The bravest act I ever saw was the act of a woman, and you must know I have seen many brave deeds and seen man) brave men. Tne bravest of all, perhaps. was my Quaker father. This man lived | seventy-two years in the wilderness, al- | among wild beasts and wilder men; yet he never learned how to either load or | fire a gun. He never raised his band | ‘against anything or spoke one cross word even to the dumb brutes. True, this is not the sort of courage that appeals most loudly, but it is the loftiest, truest and most Christlike courage to be found under the sun. And so this little story of a woman’s brave deed will not strike you as remarkable. | We were 200 miles from the nearest post- office, in the heart of the wilderness, and surrounded by savages. We had almost daily battles; nearly every day some one of our 2000 men was killed or maimed. But this little quiet story is not of men or of battles, but of a woman—the preacher’s wife. Do you know anything of the old customs of the border? "Of the preacher, the preacher who must always preach the funeral sermon? No matter who died, or where, or how, there must be a funeral | sermon. To this day my mother, who is with me, asks, when one of the old neigh- bors dies up in Oregon, “Who preached the funeral sermon ?” One bright spring day, after a sudden rainstorm, a poor abandoned woman, who | bad been caring for the wounded all night, | and now was drinking aguin, started to | walk across the roaring creek on a foot~ log from one saloon to another. Half-way she stopped, turned, tried to cross back, to go forward, but at last, with a wild ci of despair, threw up her hands and fe{fi to be picked up by the miners miles below. They picked the willow twigs from her cold hands and the grasses from her | hair, smoothed her wet dress, folded | the poor hands and, having made such a coffin as they could, brought her back up to the great log house, wuich served as a fort, arsenal, courthouse and church, for the funeral sermon. She had been good— good to the wounded, good to the sick, good to everybody but herself—but she was what the world calls bad—bad—the only woman in the town at that time, except the preacher’s young wife. They went to get the preacher to oreach the sermon after they had dug the grave upon the hill, but the preacher would not 0. They came after me to go and nrge im to say a few words over the poor, lone dead woman, and I with some others went to him. He was a_good man, but he said: “No; it will do her no good and will injure the cause of the new church.” The young wife urged him to go. *‘No, no. Bhe was desperate, wicked. Let her death be an example. That is best—best for the living and all the same now to the dead.” “Then I will go!”’ “What! you, Mary? If you must go, £0; and never come back to me.”’ She did not say one word. She caught up some wild flowers from the mnmefas she hurried out and on up to the place Wwhere the dead lay among the men, and in such haste that we could scarcely keep up with her. And she passed right in, down through the dense crowd that gave way to let her pass, and she fell on her knees at the foot of the box, and ail the men held their heads low as she silently prayed, and then she got up, and as she moved up to the head of the dead woman her husband stood mn the door. She heeded nothing, no one, but tenderly laid the flowers on the dead girl's breast. Then, as she leaned over and kissed the cold and despised woman the men began to cry like children. I don’t know why they cried s0, but they a1l cried together, though she never said one word. _And the preacher came softly to her side and, turning to the men, said: “Forgive me! Icame to?)reaeh the sermon, but she has preached it. Take up the dead and let us all go to the grave together.’’ € was a good man, a brave, good man; but who was the braver, who saw the right road to the hearts of the miners, the duty to the living and the dead more clearly, the woman or the man? We were a mixed lot in the mines. There was a great, big Enelishman, who afterward grew very rich in New Zealand. We met long after in London and talked of old times. We talked of women. Men will talk of women sometimes, when JOAQUIN MILLER, [Reproduced from his latest photograph.] nia at half what_it costs now, in heaven’s name let her do it. It is not only her right to do it, it 1s her duty to doit. I shall vote for woman suffrage. I am a new convert, but a true one, I was afraid this new privilege would drag women down. But we see it is hfting men up, and if there is anything under the sun that will lift us up out of the political gut- ters of California let us have it, and let us have it now! 1 assume that this august gathering means action—figuratively speaking, a fight; and I assume that you are not going to fight for fun, but for victory. I want ;I_ou to fight and I want you to win. herefore let me first tell you of the strength and the position of our friends, the enemy; let me tell you the strengih of the lion in your path. ‘Whien I was first in Paris I saw a woman there, a lion-tamer, exhibit the magnificent king of beasts in harness. He was hitched to a chariot in which she rode around and around in the circus with her children. True, he was chained across the forearms and the hinder parts, so that he could do no great harm; but he was made to think that that was a part of the beautiful glit- tering gold harness, and it was all right. Now, you women may just as well as not. harness up man if you will be wise. But that is another story. To begin with, it is a fact that California, the men of California, are rather fond of women. They always have been. Itis their weakness—and their strength. I repeat, I take it you .are here to fight, figuratively, and I take it you are to fight for victory—not for noise nor for renown, but for victory and the good of humanity.” Well, victory is yours, if you will have it so. If {on will only be wise, half as wise as that little French woman in Paris, you can not only harness the lion in your path, but have him haul you all around the circus. Now, I want woman suffrage in Califor- nia, but there is a lion in the path, a power that you must harness to your use or provoke to strife and your own’ destruc- tion. Let me tell you a few facts. Your august and earnest boay is_gathered here in the American Italy. You are in the land of the vine and the fig tree. Have {lou any real idea of the vast industry ere in the grape fields? At Heidelberg, as many of you have seen, there is a wine cask that holds 47,000 gallons of wine. This cask is still, as it has been for generations, the wonder and admiration of ail the Old World. Forty- seven thousand gallons of wine! Did ever you see or hear of inall America? I think not. one in fifty of yon ever heard of anything like a cask in America capable of holding 47,000 gallons of wine, or even half that amount. Yet in Fresno, where I went last week to get some facts about this lion in the path, I was shown casks that held not only 47,000 gallons of wine, but fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, and e up as hl{h as ninety-four thousand gallons, and I was told of a cask further on and out in the country that contained 100,006. In Napa there are great cellars of wine, seas of wine and brandies. And who own these vineyards? Who tend them? Who tread out the wine and own the land and feed their wives and little ones from their toil and care? Why, the men who are to vote on the question of woman suffrage. More than that, every bank, every broker, _broker’s clerk and bank director has a direct interest in this tremendous industry of this new State, for n’e:;ly every "vineym;i. nearly every one of these countless ‘casks 1s mor! to 1E«:mm bllnk. Fsaned here, ladies, is the lion in your path. What will you do with him?’ ngneu him to your service or muke him ‘‘asa lion rousea’’ ? Idoubt if anything like that | and barley and made more money than before. They sold them to make beer out of! And here do you not see the paws and the nose of another, a more terrible lion, in the path? Here are the great brewer- ies, the great rye and barley fields, the great hop fields. Consider ~the unem- ployed, consider the ruined homes, con- sider the desert you would make of Cali- fornia. And cui bono? Do you.not see how terribly you tax the gallantry of Cali- fornia now when you say, “Give us suf- frage, so that we can espouse prohibition’ ? Very easy it would be to talk loud and taik long, as we have all heard very good people do in denouncing and damning the wine and the wine industries, but such talk is out of date. This would be to in- sult some of the best and most honest common sense in the United States gath- ered here to-day. i Now ther{ is a third lion. He is lying in the jungle farther on. He is not so big, not so devouring, but he is terrible in bat- tle. The wine-merchant, the iiquor-dealer, if you please, tne saloon-keeper. Did you ever see and know a saloon-keeper, his wife, children? I mean the respectable saloon- keeper, not the keeper of a ‘‘deadfall.” I was Judge of a city of saloons, where that poor woman was drowned. I had to accept their bonds and give their license. I knew each one, his character, often his history. Well, in the first place a coward cannot keep a saloon. A stingy man has no custom. A saloon-keeper must be the *‘sober Injun.” So you see the saloon- keeper is a cool, sober, open-handed de- termined man, ‘“‘a sober, cool, determined villain,” if you insist, but he is the third lion before you, and he is the hardest fighter of the three. He is organized, he is_rich, he is relentless in war. Are you, who want to vote and who ought to vote, going to rouse this lion also ? 1 invoke you, harness one, two, all three of these lions, gird them in trappings of gold, as you can, and you shall ride in such a chariot in the coming California circus as vou never dreamed of; or go around these lions in your path, as you can, and let them sleep as did the women | of New Zealand, but arouse them, then face and fight them and you will be *‘smit~ ten hip and thigh,” you will be torn to pieces, you will be so torn to shreds and tatters that there will not be left to you even a piece of petticoat biz enough for goulto make a flag out of for the next attle. Send everything but the one central idea behind you, as did the women of New Zealand. Pay no attention to the prayers and fiieadings of timid men or ax-grinding cranks. They are Jonahs, throw them over and sail on, and on, and on, straight on, as did Columbus, in spite of prayers and tears to set up the croes and say mass for help in the middle of the sea. “Time enough,” said he in answer, ‘“to set up the cross and say mass when on solid land.” Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behina the gates of Hercules; Before him not the ghost of shores, Before him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: “Now must we pray, For lo! the very stars are gone. Brave adm’r), speak; what shall T say?®” “Why, say, *Sail on! sail on! and on?' " “My men grow mutinous day by day; My men grow ghastly, wan and weak.” The stout mate thought of home; & spray Of sait wave washed his swarthy cheek. “What shali I say, brave adm'ri, say, 1¢ we sight naught but seas at dawn " “Why. you shall say at break of day, *Sall'on! sail on! sail ouf and ont ' They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, Until at last the blanched mate said: “Why, now not even God would know Should I and all my men fall dead. These very winds forget their way, For God from these dread seas is gone. Now speak, brave adm'rl; speax and suy — He said: “Sail on! sail on! and on!” » They sailed. They sailed. Then spake themate: “This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. He curls his lips, he lies in wait, With lifted teeth, as if to bite! Brave adm’rl, say but one good word; What shail we do when Hope is gone " The words leapt as a leaping sword : “Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!” And now one word to the honestand earnest Prohibitionists, men and women of the faith to which I was born—for I see Lam called to speak to about half the al- phabet and so must scatter like a shotgun to hit half the game. 1 do not advise; I only tell you what I would do. 1 would suppress about one-half the ualoong. or at least all the dark “deaa- falls,” in order that we might have the better open and outdoor resorts, as in Germany. This you will find will meet the approval of ‘all our best wine mer- chants. I'would do this for their good as well as the good of the public; just as I would suppress at least half the news- apers, in order that we might have some €W reasonable and respectabie. I was a “teetotaler,” but in Europe I learned to use wine after a year or two of effort, for it is the milk of Italy, and in nearly a dozen years abroad I never saw but one drunken man in [taly, and that muan was an American. 1n the remote mountain towns wine and blackbread and blackbread and wine make the staple of food. The wine there is trodden out by the bare feet of women, as in the old Bible days. I did not like to drink this wine at first. It seemed to me that it was not clean, but one day I saw them at their work of treading in the wine press, and I noticed that they all, from the biggest to the least, washed their feet—washed them carefully, after they got done treading out the wine. Itwould be on my conscience did Inotaa- mit that Ialways have wine on my table and hope I always shall. In fact, phy- sicians say that if they could get people to drink wine, as in italy, we would have as little drunkenness here as there. . Now as berween the man who takes ‘“a little wine for his stomach’s sake” and the man who will not “look upon the wine when it is red,” you may have your preference, I may have mine. There may, in truth, be as many degrees of temperance as creeds in Christianity. The broad Chris- tian accepts all dreeds; the broad temper- ance man is glad of temperance in any form and under any flag, only go that it goes forward and forward for the better- ment of man to the final round-u% Some men will have only prohibition. Each has a right to his creed. Now, shall I tell you bluntly the cause of increasing intemperance among our rich and poor peoplein America? Bluntly, our poor and rich people have caught'a fatal disease from the gay and luxurious French of Paris—a disease that makes them desperate—a disease that drives them to drunkenness, death—often death by their own hands, for ours is the land of suicides. And what is the fatal Freoch disease that is driving us to drunkenness—death by our own hands? High up on the portal walls of Paris and over their temple doors the French once emblazoned this maa lie: “There is no God! Death is an eternal sleep.” And although this has been obliterated from the walls and temple doors it still festers in the heart of every gay Parisian. He cries out 1n the night: “There is no God. Death is an eternal sleep, and since death ends all I will ‘eat, drink and be merry,’ for to-morrow I die.” This is the fatal disease the poor rich people of America have caught from the gay French of foolish Paris. Our rich and traveled people will not be outdone by Parisians, even in atheism. They, too, cry out, “There is no God; death is an eternal sleep: therefore I, too, will eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow I die.”” Butcan any law, prohibition or otherwise, reach the poor rich in America? ‘‘More than 10,000 suicides and homicides last year,” said the Superintendent of Schools for California last month at Los Angeles. And aid you ever hear of a suicide who was a Christian? Did you ever hear of a suicide who was a true 'Mussulman? Did you ever hear of a suicide who was a true Indian? I never knew or heard of a Mus- sulman who committed suicide. I never knew or heard of one who was not certain of another and “a "better world. Inever knew of an Indian in all my intercourse with them who committed suicide, and I never knew one who was not certain of im- mortality. He read it in the resurrection of the liitle seeds that fell from the trees into the hollow of God’s hand. He read it in the resurrection of the great, dead, vellow year that had laid down in its shroud of snow, awaiting the roaring month of March to trumpet through the pines and waken it again and garment 1t and garland it in foliage and in flames. And he never knew one doubt till the white man came to put aside nis book of nature and try to teach him from another book. Go teach the rich man, whom no law can reach, the truths of immortality and you will teach him temperance. I care not, so far as results go, whether you teach him the immortality of the Turk, I care not whether you teach him the immortal- ity of the Theosophist, the Indian or the Christian, only teach him that he is not a Chinaman, to be blown out like a candle, and you will save him from dissipation, drunkenness, death. And here is where and why woman must be the savior of the world.” Woman by herself, alone, unwnrfed b{ man, knows, knows as Socrates new, that she is immortal. Is there one unbelieving woman to one hundred unbelieving men? There is not one to a thousand if left to her own finer senses unbiased by the luxuries and the follies of man. She knows, she knows! True, there have been, there are, great women, blinded by the books of men, who willingly walk in darkness and doubt be- cause—Dbecause it is counted brave, bright, Parisian; and yet in their heart of hearts they know better, They naturally, like the Indian, read immortality in the book of nature. But how are you to reach the poor rich yonung men of America? How can you earnest women reach these young men, who, as a rule, are ashamed of their fathers, who were hewers of wood and drawers of water? Each man’s house is his castle. May not each rich man make his house a wine cellar if he pleases? You may prohibit ana prohibit and yet your laws would be only straws in the wind. You have got to reach these men as Jesus reached the hearts of men—by love, not by legislation; by lessons from the lilies of the field; by the continual lesson of im- mortality from the eternal book of nature. Go to the rich drunkard or atheist, the same thing in the end, with the Book in vour hand. If he is on his deathbed and he knows he is on his deathbed, he may listen to you; 1f heis not on his deathbed he will politely laugh at you and ask you how you know it is God’s book. Drop the Book and take up a leaf, a_flower, a blade of grass—for every blade of grass is a saber waving in the wind, battling for God and truth and immorléali:y—ssy to him, “Here, whatever that book may be, this is His work. This, this little dusty downtrodden blade of grass is God's work, and all the genius and wit and industry and learning of all the men that have ever lived never dared aream of making even so much as a siugle blade of grass of all the grasses that carpet the earth for the feet of unbelieving 1man.’ And behold how beautiful, how miracu- lously, indescribably beautiful this one little blade of grass, that has seen the resurrection and has risen to testify to im- mortality! I would point to the little flowers on the fervid foothills, the sapphire, the snow white, the poppies garmented in gold; and on up, up to the chaparral sing- ing with busy brown bees, and on up to the pines, the tsmarack, the spruce, the cedar, the juniper, the sequoia; on up, on up to the rock- built battlements of the Sierras; on, on up to where the snow-clad pyramids prop the porch of heaven with their icy heimets, and on, and on, and on to where the ever- Jasting stones burn incense perpetually on God’s altar, lighting the way for souls to the endless worlds beyond. Believe me, the baven of the great ship of Temperance isnot in Law but Love; Faith and Hope and Charity. These three are the Fortu- nate Isles in our mad sea of doubt, dark- ness, death. One variely of the cricket has its ears in its hind legs, ~ < EN who listened in the halls of Congress to the utterances of ‘Webster and Clay in the first half of the present century are very few indeed at the present day, and soon these giants of debate, who thrilled the country and made their influ- ence felt through the civilized world, will find no longer any dwelling place in the personal reminiscences of the living. The time is rapidly approaching when men shall vainly seek for one who could say, “I have been an awed listener to the great expounder of the constitution, and I have been charmed with the eloquence of his famous sometime rival—the man who made ‘the Slashes’ known beyond the boundaries of Virginia.” Among the few in the West whose for- tune and privilege it was to have seen and heard both Webster and Clay during the closing years of their services in the coun- cils of the Nation is Professor George Davidson. Chauncey Depew’s recent visit WEBS ER™ (LA and grace of delivery for their effect; they | must be framed with the foreknowledge that a nation will andlyze the oration and weigh it for what it is worth in solid wis- dom. i “Webster lacked those easy graces which were charactenistic of Clay. With Web- ster it was matter more than manner. Webster didn’t fascinate like Clay. I felt when I heard him that_a great solemnity had settled over all. I wasa very young man at the time, but I was deeply im- pressed, and when I went away at the conclusion of the speech I had a good conception of its meaning and remem- bered many of his arguments. After hearing Webster one felt impelled to read the report of the speech, and the reading was as interesting as the delivery. Web- ster, speaking to Congress, spoke to all time. Clay held hisaudiencescompletely; but the strength of most of Clay’s speeches was gone when they appeared in cold type.s ; yDavidson was a student in the Philadel- phia High School, and took advantage of axe DANIEL WEBSTER. | Reproduced from a steel engraving.) to this City and his after-dinner speech at the Palace recalled to Professor Dayidson with some vividness no less a celebrity than Henry Clay. “I have listened spellbound to an ad- dress by Henry Clay,” said the distin- guished scientist. “He was truly a most captivating speaker and he held audiences for hours by the charms of his oratory. Now, Mr. Depew belongs to the old Clay school—he must be seen and heard to be appreciated. “Depew interests you from start to finish, and you imagine that you could sit | and listen to him all night. ~Take up the morning paper containing a verbatim re- port of that address, however, and you are actually led to wonder what there was in it to have moved you to admiration and applause. T sat one afternoon enthralled by the flow of eloquence from the lips of Clay: yet when I went home I could not recall one of his utterances, and when I read the report of the speech I was much disappointed and was unable to discover much real value | in it. ““The old Clay type of orator is very rare now. To-day the vast reading punlic is best acquainted with statesmen and great speakers through the medium of the press. The sentences of a statesman, therefore, cannot depend upon the charm the opportunity of hearing Webster in his campaign speeches for General Harrison in 1840, The commanding figure, the massive head, the face telling of power, land the deep-chested voice that added lorlcle to strong sentences, he remembers well. He heard Clay while the latter was the recognized leader of the Whig party in 1841-42, and during the time the Clay land bill and the same statesman’s proposed amendment to limit the veto power of the President were subjects of warm discus- sion. Clay, tall, graceful, with a counten- ance as expressive as it was intellectual, won his way to the hearts of people by the magnetism of l\is({wrsonllity. Professor Davidson did not venture a comparison of Webster with any modern | statesman or orator. Like Demosthenes, or like Napoleon, the author of the *‘Lib- | erty and Union’ speech has a place all by himself. But there is something new in | the comparison of the brilliant Henry Clay and the delightfully interesting Chauncey Depew. 3 Webster's speeches, all the world agrees, are masterpieces of literature, and time | proves more and more that the effect of | his speeches was immeasurably beyond the audiences and occasions of their de- liverance. The suffering Cubans, were Webster in the flesh, would have a mighty HENRY CLAY. [Beproduced from a steel engraving.] friend in him. Webster's celebrated Greek speech, in fact, may serve now almost as an appeal in behalf of the seopls who are striving to shake off the jpanish yoke. Here is an extract: ‘!8ir, I'am not of those who are for with- holding aid when it is not urgently needed, and when the stress is past and the aid no longer necessary overwhelming the suffer- ers withcaresses. I will not stand by and see my fellow-man drowning without stretching out a hand to help him until he has, by his own efforts and presence of mind, reached the sinore in safety and then incumber him with aid. With suffer- ing Greece now is the crisis of her fate, her great, it may be her last, struggle. 8ir, while we sit here deliberating her des- tiny may be decided. The Greeks, con- tending “with ruthless oppressors, turn their eyes to us and invoke us by their an- cestors; by theirslaughtered wivesand chil- dren; by their own blood, poured out like water; by the hecatombs of dead they have heaped up, as it were, to_heaven, they in- voke, they 1mplore us for some cheering sound, some look of sympathy, some token of compassionate regard. They look to us as the great republic of the earth, and they ask us, by our common faith, whether we can forget that they are struggling, as we once strugglea for what we now so happily enjoy ? I cannot say, sir, that they will succeed; that rests with neaven. But for myself, sir, if | should to-morrow hear that they hav. failei—that their last phalanx had g down beneath the Turkish cimetar, that the flames of their last city had sunk in ashes, and that naught remained but the wide melancholy waste where Greece once was, I should st reflect, with the most heartfelt satis tion, that I have asked you in the nan of seven millions of freemen, thatyou would give them at least the cheering of one friendly voice.”” But Henry Clay, as the foremost advo- cate of the American system of protec- tion, has an immortal place, though in a lower niche than Webster, in the y temple of historic fame. His spee the American system will alw b studied by political students, who will victure to themselves the effect that must have been carried by the magic of his voice, when he shot forth such periods as these, that statesmen are to-day repeating in the halls of Congress: “When gentlemen have succeeded in this design of an immediate or gradual de- struction of the American system what is their substitute? Freetrade! Free trade! The call for free trade is as unavailing as the cry of aspoiled child in its nurse’s arms for the moon or the stars that glitter in the firmament of heaven. It never has existed, it never will exist. Trade im- plies at least two parties. To be free it should be fair, equal and reciprocal. But if we throw our ports wide open to the admission of foreign productions free of a'l duty, what ports of any foreign nation shall we find open to the free admission of our surf)lus produce? We may break down all barriers to free trade on our part, but the work will not be complete until foreign powers shall have removed theirs, There would be freedom on one side and restrictions, prohibitions and exclusions on the other. The belts and the bars and the chains of all other nations will zemain undisturbed.” Patent Office Expenses. “The Patent Office is one of the Gov- ernment branches which has ciaimed for many years that 1t pays its own ex- penses,” spoke a well-known Congress- man; *‘so does the green goods business and the lottery business, but the victims of 1t bardly pay expenses. I was consid- erably worked up a few days ago when I saw the Patent Office had taken $30 from a man, and in return issued him a patent for a device for tigping his bat. How he can get his $30 and other expenses back on that wonderful invention I cannot imag- ine, and I think the Government should be engaged in some more honorable and better business than skinning poor inven- tors, for that is the plain English of it.’— ‘Washington Post. Kangaroos are such a plague in Australia that the Government pays a bounty of 8d for each animal that is killed ——— NEW TO-DAY. SOLE AGENTS FOR THE MAGGIONI KID GLOVES. Simply Overstocked IRISH POINT CURTAINS, And in order to reduce the stock we shall place on Special Sale for MONDAY ~—~AND— TUESDAY ONL.Y 900 Pairs of IRISH POINT LACE CURTAINS at Never-Before-Heard-of Priees ! 300 PAIRS —— AT $2.50 a Pair. 300 PAIRS e P $3.50 a Pair. 300 Pi\_l}:‘(s* $4.50 a Pair. Remember, These Prices are for MONDAY AND TUESDAY ONL. Y. Our Silk Sale of last week was the talk of the town. This sale eclipses it, Come with great expectations —our word for it—there will be no disappointments. MAIL ORDERS PROMPTLY FILLED. NEWNAN & LEVINSON, 125, 127, 129, 131 Kearny St. Bran ch Store 742 and 744 Market.