586 lines
29 KiB
Plaintext
586 lines
29 KiB
Plaintext
9 page printout, page 65 to 73
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
CHAPTER 6.
|
||
|
||
FROM EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-SIX TO
|
||
EIGHTEEN EIGHTY-EIGHT.
|
||
|
||
Ingersoll was now in his fifty-third year, when a large
|
||
majority of geniuses have long since done the most and the best of
|
||
their work. Astir almost at the dawn, arduously toiling and already
|
||
producing in the morning, and achieving their greatest before the
|
||
sun was overhead, they have rested in the calm of the afternoon, --
|
||
if indeed the night have not too early touched with cooling kiss
|
||
their tired brow. This is the rule. But nature delights in
|
||
exceptions. Why we do not know. It may be that she tires of
|
||
uniformity, of the ceaselessness and invariability of forces, of
|
||
the inevitableness of atoms and molecules -- tires of the feast she
|
||
has spread for herself -- and that of her own ennui, in some
|
||
miraculous way, the exceptional is born. Whatever the explanation,
|
||
she made exceptions with Ingersoll, -- exceptions in all the
|
||
periods of life. For he produced practically nothing before his
|
||
twenty-seventh year: this may be termed the exception of his youth.
|
||
He produced nothing before his thirty-seventh year that is either
|
||
intellectually or artistically comparable to his best: this may be
|
||
termed the exception of his manhood. He did not reach the sublimest
|
||
heights of eloquence until he was forty-two years of age; and he
|
||
did not cease to produce things that were both intellectually and
|
||
artistically comparable to his best until his death: these may be
|
||
termed the exceptions of his maturity, -- exceptions far more
|
||
remarkable than either of the others. For, in many respects, both
|
||
the quantity and the quality of his work considered, his
|
||
accomplishments during the last fourteen years of his life were
|
||
greater than those of the preceding twenty. During the fourteen
|
||
years referred to, he sustained undiminished his former wealth and
|
||
exuberance, dowering the future with the profoundest, sublimest,
|
||
and tenderest thoughts, producing many of his most powerful
|
||
lectures, and, at fifty-eight, his greatest literary masterpiece,
|
||
Shakespeare, -- literary masterpiece despite its being a lecture.
|
||
Moreover, he did what he had never done before -- entered the
|
||
mental tourney against the ablest and most daring knights and
|
||
knights-errant of Christendom, finally receiving the coveted prize
|
||
in the lists of international controversy. Verily might we say of
|
||
him: His heart "there was no winter in't," and his mind "an autumn
|
||
't was that grew the more by reaping."
|
||
|
||
2.
|
||
|
||
It was pointed out in the preceding section, that nature made
|
||
many exceptions with Ingersoll; and it has been written elsewhere,
|
||
by an eminent critic, that Ingersoll "was not as other men are."
|
||
Not only is the latter true in general; it is true in numerus
|
||
particulars. And had this critic deigned the Great Agnostic entry
|
||
into the jealously guarded precincts of conventional letters, he
|
||
certainly would have written thus: "Ingersoll was not as other
|
||
literary men are." For whatever Ingersoll felt, Ingersoll could
|
||
think and write -- anywhere. He did not require seclusion, nor even
|
||
retirement. He never sought the sequestration of the study -- never
|
||
became a literary convict. He was universally opposed to the
|
||
penitentiary idea. In its stead, he put the idea of social
|
||
intercourse, of company. Unless some other than mere literary
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
65
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
considerations prevented, he wrote while in the bosom of his
|
||
family. Many of his productions were written while the conversation
|
||
of others was in his ears, or while his children were playing about
|
||
him with toys and pets, the rabbits and kittens actually capering
|
||
over his manuscript. Perhaps this accounts for the deep and tender
|
||
notes of human love, the elemental passion, the ripples of
|
||
laughter, and even the tears, that linger in his lines.
|
||
|
||
But of all the evidence that might be offered in proof of his
|
||
capacity for literary production under conditions which undoubtedly
|
||
would have been fatal to most others whose names will live long in
|
||
literature, none is either more typical or interesting than the
|
||
following. On December 18, 1886, he was traveling, by rail, from
|
||
New York to Washington, where he was to lecture. "Let's go into the
|
||
smoker,' 'Clint,'" he said, rather suddenly, to his brother-in-law,
|
||
Mr. Clinton Pinckney Farrell, a constant companion. As soon as the
|
||
two were reseated, Ingersoll took from his pocket some old
|
||
envelopes or bits of paper and a pencil and began to write. After
|
||
continuing uninterruptedly for a considerable time, he handed his
|
||
rough manuscript to Mr. Farrell and asked: "Do you think that will
|
||
do for 'Harry'? "Would it" do for 'Harry'"? Yes: it would "do for
|
||
'Harry'" -- it would do for posterity; for it was Life, the
|
||
greatest prose-poem, and one of the greatest poems in any form,
|
||
that had been written by an American. It was a laurel fit for
|
||
Shakespeare's brow -- a priceless gem whose luster praise could
|
||
only dim. The production was immediately published in the Christmas
|
||
number of the New York Dramatic Mirror, the editor, Mr. Harrison
|
||
Grey Fiske, having requested his great friend to write something
|
||
for the paper.
|
||
|
||
3.
|
||
|
||
The year 1887 afforded an opportunity for Ingersoll to perform
|
||
an act that put still another star in his crown of fame -- an act
|
||
that, even had it been the only one of his life, would have
|
||
entitled him to the gratitude and affection, not only of every
|
||
genuine American, -- every enlightened believer in the sacred
|
||
principles upon which this Republic rests, -- but of every other
|
||
real friend of physical and mental liberty.
|
||
|
||
During the summer of 1886, Mr. Charles B. Reynolds arranged an
|
||
itinerary with a view of delivering rationalistic lectures, or of
|
||
holding freethought meetings, at various places in New Jersey. His
|
||
invitations to the public were extended through the usual media of
|
||
newspapers, circulares, posters, and so forth; and the resultant
|
||
meetings, attended by some of the best citizens, were peaceful,
|
||
orderly, and respectable, when, indeed, they were not rendered
|
||
otherwise by a minor element of bias and bigotry, unrestrained by
|
||
local officials. Mr. Reynolds encountered no great difficulty from
|
||
that source, however, until he reached Boonton. There, while
|
||
speaking, -- while peacefully availing himself of the very first
|
||
rights of an American citizen, -- his tent was besieged and
|
||
destroyed by a mob; he was personally attacked, with all kinds of
|
||
missiles; and he undoubtedly would have sustained serious physical
|
||
injury had he not succeeded, during the confusion, in evading his
|
||
persecutors and summarily quitting the town. An effort to obtain
|
||
legal redress by suing the latter for damages, merely elicited the
|
||
shamefully hypocritical subterfuge of a countercharge of disturbing
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
66
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
the peace. But the authorities evidently being blessed with ample
|
||
precaution, if with nothing more, "the issue was never joined."
|
||
Some time after, but before the excitement in Boonton had subsided,
|
||
Mr. Reynolds appeared in Morristown, a few miles distant, and,
|
||
without attempting to hold meetings, distributed some copies of a
|
||
pamphlet, appending thereto a satirical cartoon of his experience
|
||
in Boonton. A number of his persecutors from that place were
|
||
instantly on his heels, with the result that the grand jury, under
|
||
the colonial "blue laws," found two indictments against him; one
|
||
for "blasphemy" in Boonton, the other for "blasphemy" in
|
||
Morristown. "Blasphemy"! Only thirty miles from the metropolis of
|
||
America, only thirteen years from the twentieth century, on the
|
||
very ground where Whitman had sung the songs of democracy, a
|
||
citizen of the Republic was to be tried for "blasphemy"! But the
|
||
indictment had been found. The law was there. A coiled serpent, it
|
||
had lain in lethargy for hundreds of years, beneath both the old
|
||
and the new constitutions of New Jersey; and, should a single
|
||
conviction result, it could uncoil and show its forked tongue and
|
||
cruel fangs to the brave and heroic apostle of mental liberty. It
|
||
could raise its horrid head and hiss in the ear of Charles B.
|
||
Reynolds: " Two hundred dollars, and imprisonment at hard labor for
|
||
twelve months."
|
||
|
||
Ingersoll moved gallantly to the defense. And what a defense
|
||
it was! -- not merely to win a verdict, not merely for Charles B.
|
||
Reynolds, not for any citizen of New Jersey, nor yet for any
|
||
citizen of the United States, but for all mankind. The personal
|
||
interests of the defendant, the intense public feeling, the legal
|
||
aspects of the case, -- its uniqueness -- the only one of its kind
|
||
ever tried in New Jersey, and the only one that had been tried in
|
||
the United States in over fifty years -- all these must be shut out
|
||
of mind, if we would justly appreciate Ingersoll's effort. It
|
||
transcends and outreaches the merely local, the provincial, the
|
||
ephemeral. If one of the gods of Olympus were on trial, it would
|
||
make a fitting defense. It is for all place and all time -- a
|
||
symphony of justice for the starlit cathedral of the universe. Let
|
||
us listen, in passing, to some of its enrapturing harmonies: --
|
||
|
||
"The most important thing in this world is liberty. More
|
||
important than food or clothes -- more important than gold or
|
||
houses or lands -- more important than art or science -- more
|
||
important than all religions, is the liberty of man. * * * Gladly
|
||
would I give up the splendors of the nineteenth century -- gladly
|
||
would I forget every invention that has leaped from the brain of
|
||
Man -- gladly would I see all books ashes, all works of art
|
||
destroyed, all statues broken, and all the triumphs of the world
|
||
lost -- gladly, joyously would I go back to the abodes and dens of
|
||
savagery, if that were necessary to preserve the inestimable gem of
|
||
human liberty."
|
||
|
||
And after demonstrating that what is theologically called
|
||
blasphemy is not the same in all lands at the same time; that what
|
||
is blasphemy here is worship there; that what is blasphemy here now
|
||
may be worship here to-morrow, and vice versa; that no man can
|
||
blaspheme a book or the Infinite; that, in short, theological
|
||
blasphemy is an utter impossibility, -- an unreal crime, -- he
|
||
inquires; --
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
67
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
"What is real blasphemy?"
|
||
|
||
And he replies: --
|
||
|
||
"To live on the unpaid labor of other men -- that is
|
||
blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To enslave your fellow-man, to put chains upon his body --
|
||
that is blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To enslave the minds of men, to put manacles upon the brain,
|
||
padlocks upon the lips -- that is blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To deny what you believe to be true, to admit to be true what
|
||
you believe to be a lie -- that is blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To strike the weak and unprotected, in order that you may
|
||
gain the applause of the ignorant and superstitious mob -- that is
|
||
blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To persecute the intelligent few, at the command of the
|
||
ignorant many -- that is blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To forge chains, to build dungeons, for honest fellow-men --
|
||
that is blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To pollute the souls of children with the dogma of eternal
|
||
pain -- that is blasphemy.
|
||
|
||
"To violate your conscience -- that is blasphemy."
|
||
|
||
It would take us too far across the boundaries of biography to
|
||
quote any of the beautiful and touching definitions of "worship"
|
||
naturally following here; and there is no time to take even a
|
||
hurried glance into the wondrous volume which he described -- the
|
||
book of all that is good and useful, tender and true, -- "the bible
|
||
of the world," -- which no one can blaspheme. Nor can we do aught
|
||
else than to leave to imagination the profound thoughts, the
|
||
penetrating and luminous logic, the pathos, the lightnings of wit
|
||
and the sun-glints of humor, that lie between Ingersoll's
|
||
characteristic "Gentlemen of the Jury" and his final ardent hope
|
||
that it will never again be necessary to stand in the temple of
|
||
justice "and plead for the Liberty of Speech."
|
||
|
||
At the conclusion of Ingersoll's address, the court adjourned
|
||
for luncheon. During the adjournment, many of the people who had
|
||
been listening to the speaker crowded around him and expressed
|
||
agreement with what he had said. Among them was the son of a
|
||
minister of the place. When the court reconvened, Ingersoll joined
|
||
in a conference of the three judges as to the case; and, in
|
||
commenting on the matter, while the jury were deliberating, he told
|
||
the judges what the people had said; and he added: "You better
|
||
discharge Reynolds, or I will appeal and try the case again and
|
||
convert the whole town."
|
||
|
||
It redounds none the less to Ingersoll's credit that the jury,
|
||
sitting honor-bound in the shadow of a law which they could not
|
||
evade, rendered a verdict of guilt. And still less does his credit
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
68
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
suffer from the fact that the court, having listened with rapt
|
||
attention, imposed, under the same circumstances, a minimum fine
|
||
only.
|
||
|
||
Fearful of affixing an anticlimax to Ingersoll's splendid
|
||
action, I hesitate to add here, and do add only for the sake of
|
||
narrative completeness, that the fine, twenty-five dollars, with
|
||
costs, amounting in all to seventy-five dollars, was paid by him
|
||
that his services were gratuitous; and that while in Morristown, in
|
||
connection with the case, he refused an offer of a thousand dollars
|
||
if he would go elsewhere, for a few hours, to another court.
|
||
|
||
4.
|
||
|
||
Many admirers of Ingersoll's intellect and art must often have
|
||
wished, that, in order to assign to his genius the place which they
|
||
are so confident it merits, a comparison of at least one of his
|
||
productions with those of his distinguished contemporaries, on the
|
||
same theme, might be made. The author confesses that he has
|
||
experienced this wish, and that the task involved might have been
|
||
included in the present work had he not discovered that such task
|
||
had already been performed. Although unconsciously, the comparison
|
||
desired was admirably effected by Mr. Edward W. Bok, who, after the
|
||
death of Beecher, in 1887, requested the latter's friends to
|
||
contribute to a volume in his memory. Among the many distinguished
|
||
persons to respond (in addition to Ingersoll), were Cleveland, E.
|
||
P. Roe, George William Curtis, Talmage, Whittier, Holmes, the Duke
|
||
of Argyll, and Gladstone.
|
||
|
||
It would here be obviously impracticable to institute even the
|
||
briefest comparison of the styles and the methods of these writers
|
||
in treating their common theme; and it would be as obviously unjust
|
||
to present examples of the style and the method of any particular
|
||
one of them. It is fair to state, however, that no one who has not
|
||
read the memorial to Beecher can justly appreciate the absolute
|
||
uniqueness and the comparative loftiness, both artistic and
|
||
intellectual, with which Ingersoll approached the subject before
|
||
him. In his entire tribute, -- the longest in the volume, -- not an
|
||
act nor an incident, and only one date, in the life of the
|
||
preacher, -- the year of his birth, -- is specifically mentioned;
|
||
and yet that tribute presents to the gaze of a sorrowing world a
|
||
clear, comprehensive, ample view of Henry Ward Beecher. It reveals
|
||
the psychological evolution of the famous divine, from his cradle
|
||
"in a Puritan penitentiary," until he became "the greatest orator
|
||
that stood within the pulpit's narrow curve." It does far more: it
|
||
is an analysis, a synthesis, a characterization, a eulogy. It is
|
||
the most generous, the most beautiful, the most fitting wreath that
|
||
has ever been placed by intellectual hospitality on the tomb of a
|
||
fallen hero of a rejected faith. Like the other tributes, it will
|
||
of course be read in memory of Beecher; unlike the others, it will
|
||
be reread in memory of itself. But, read once in conjunction with
|
||
them, it will not have received the inevitable rereading before it
|
||
places the reader beyond the reach of wonderment at the statement
|
||
elsewhere made by Mr. Gladstone: "Colonel Ingersoll writes with a
|
||
rare and enviable brilliancy."
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
69
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
5.
|
||
|
||
Through the efforts of Mr. Allen Thorndike Rice, who was the
|
||
editor of the North American Review, and who enjoyed a wide
|
||
acquaintance with the leading men of his day, Ingersoll became,
|
||
during this year, the champion of Rationalism in the most memorable
|
||
religious controversy of his century. It was the most memorable,
|
||
not only because of the eminence of those taking part, but because
|
||
of scope and profundity of argument. Indeed, it would be difficult
|
||
to name another trio who, by reason of intellectual attainments and
|
||
worldwide recognition, could have brought into a discussion of the
|
||
comparative merits of Christianity and Rationalism greater dignity
|
||
and authority than the men who, seemingly unmindful of the fate of
|
||
predecessors, matched abilities with Ingersoll in 1887 and 1888.
|
||
|
||
This memorable intellectual tourney, which may be properly
|
||
termed the Field-Gladstone-Manning-Ingersoll Controversy, began in
|
||
the North American Review for August, 1887, with An Open Letter to
|
||
Robert G. Ingersoll, from Rev. Henry M. Field, D.D., and closed
|
||
with the second part of Ingersoll's reply to Cardinal Manning, in
|
||
the same magazine, for November, 1888. Field contributed two
|
||
papers; Gladstone, one paper; Manning, one paper; Ingersoll, five
|
||
papers. First attacked by one of the Christian trio, Ingersoll had
|
||
not only the last word with every antagonist, individually, but the
|
||
last word in the controversy.
|
||
|
||
As a later chapter will present Ingersoll's views of the
|
||
"fundamental truths of Christianity," it would be not only
|
||
impracticable, but a work of supererogation, to indicate here the
|
||
attitude that he assumed toward those "truths," in the lengthy
|
||
discussion just mentioned. As to the obvious outcome of the latter,
|
||
there is, similarly, as little need as there is space for dilation.
|
||
It can be stated, however, alike with fitting brevity and truth,
|
||
that it is the sincere wish of every one who is a believer in the
|
||
soundness of Rationalism, in general, and in Ingersoll's
|
||
controversial supremacy, in particular, and who is familiar with
|
||
this truly great controversy, that all may read, with impartiality
|
||
and candor, its two sides. That such is the dearest wish of the
|
||
most solicitous friends of Ingersoll, if not of those of Field,
|
||
Gladstone, and Manning, is evident in the fact that both sides of
|
||
the controversy were long since published, in full, in the
|
||
authorized edition of Ingersoll's works"
|
||
|
||
[NOTE: Walt Whitman said, "On reading Gladstone's reply to
|
||
Ingersoll: 'It won't do, Mr. Gladstone; you may try: you have the
|
||
right to try -- you try hard: but the Colonel carries too many guns
|
||
for you on that line!'" And again: "'Gladstone is no match for
|
||
Ingersoll -- at least not in such a controversy. Of course, he is
|
||
a great man, or was -- has had a past -- but in questions of the
|
||
theological sort, in questions of Homeric scholarship, he is by no
|
||
means much. Oh! there will be a funny time of it! Here he put his
|
||
two hands together scoop-wise. 'Bob will take him up this fashion,
|
||
turn him over (all sides of him), look at him sweetly, ever so
|
||
sweetly, smile, then crush him!' -- to illustrate which he worked
|
||
his hands together as if to crush their imagined burden -- 'Yes,
|
||
crush him, much as a cat would a mouse, till there's no life left
|
||
to fool with.'" -- [With Walt Whitman in Camden. by Horace Traubel.
|
||
pp 69 and 81.]
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
70
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
In the same connection, Professor Huxley wrote as follows: --
|
||
|
||
"4 Marlborough Place, Abbey Road, N.W.,
|
||
"London, March, 1889[?].
|
||
|
||
Dear Colonel Ingersoll:
|
||
|
||
"Some unknown benefactor has sent me a series of numbers of
|
||
the North American Review containing your battles with various
|
||
'Bulls of Bashan' in 1888 -- and the very kindly and appreciative
|
||
article of last April about my picador work over here ['Professor
|
||
Huxley and Agnosticism,' April, 1889]
|
||
|
||
"I write mainly to thank you for it and say that I feel the
|
||
force of your admonition to Harrison and myself -- to leave off
|
||
quarreling with one another and to join against the common enemy.
|
||
The excuse of 'Please, sir, it was the other boy began,' is
|
||
somewhat ignoble; but really if you will look at Harrison's article
|
||
again, I think you will see there was no help for it.
|
||
|
||
"However, he is far too good a man to quarrel with for long,
|
||
and I have hope we shall arrive at a treaty of peace and even
|
||
cooperation before long. In the meanwhile, I am glad to say that we
|
||
are, personally, excellent friends.
|
||
|
||
"You are to be congratulated on your opponents. The rabbi is
|
||
the only one with any stuff in him -- though, by the way, I have
|
||
not read Manning, and do not mean to. I have had many opportunities
|
||
of taking his measure -- and he is a parlous windbag -- and nothing
|
||
else, absolutely. Gladstone's attack on you is one of the best
|
||
things he has written. I do not think there is more than 50 per
|
||
cent more verbiage than necessary, nor any sentence with more than
|
||
two meanings. If he goes on improving at this rate he will be an
|
||
English classic by the time he is ninety. I see that some
|
||
Washington paper (I forget the name) has been charging me with
|
||
'British insolence' to the people of the United States for my
|
||
remarks about Mormonism. Of all people in the world, I should say
|
||
I am the last to be fairly accused of want of respect for America
|
||
or Americans, and, beyond a little mild raillery, I cannot discover
|
||
where I have sinned.
|
||
|
||
"But I expect it is only Christian zeal under the mask of
|
||
patriotism.
|
||
|
||
"I have now finished work for the present and am off to
|
||
Switzerland, to get my rickety fabric tightened up for the next
|
||
three or four months. I am good for no sustained work, but every
|
||
now and then a spurt is possible.
|
||
|
||
"Do not answer this letter, I beg, unless the spirit should
|
||
move you. My life has been made a burden to me by letter writing,
|
||
and now I do as little as possible. But if the spirit should move
|
||
you, then Monte Generoso, Mendriso, will be my address for the next
|
||
month; and after that, Maloga, Haute Engadine, up to September. I
|
||
am yours very faithfully,
|
||
|
||
T.H. Huxley."
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
71
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
6.
|
||
|
||
When, on the death of Roscoe Conkling, in 1888 the people of
|
||
the Empire State resolved to pay a fitting tribute to one of her
|
||
favorite sons, Ingersoll was unanimously invited, by a joint
|
||
legislative committee, to exercise again those powers which have
|
||
contributed so much to his reputation as the greatest of orators.
|
||
Himself an intimate friend and ardent admirer of the dead
|
||
statesman, Ingersoll gave hearty acceptance. His tribute was
|
||
delivered at Albany, on the evening of May 9th, the occasion being
|
||
a joint session of the legislature. The building in which the
|
||
session was held was taxed to its utmost capacity of some 3,500,
|
||
more than 2,000 being turned away.
|
||
|
||
Those who read the tribute to Conkling with the expectation of
|
||
finding a catalogue of his achievements, or a copy of his life's
|
||
itinerary, will meet with the same disappointment as those who read
|
||
with like expectation the tribute to Beecher. But those who read
|
||
either with the presupposition that specific treatment of act and
|
||
incident affords the truer and nobler portrait will certainly gain
|
||
in knowledge. Ingersoll was not a geologist nor an anatomist -- he
|
||
was an artist. As in the landscape of a master you behold the
|
||
simple and solitary grandeur of the familiar mountain, so in a
|
||
eulogy by Ingersoll you behold, unburdened with petty detail, the
|
||
majestic form of a Beecher or a Conkling.
|
||
|
||
Endeavoring to realize in few words something of his grace and
|
||
adequacy in the present instance, it is impossible to omit his
|
||
introduction. We listen as to a Wagnerian prelude: --
|
||
|
||
"Roscoe Conkling -- a great man, an orator, a statesman, a
|
||
lawyer, a distinguished citizen of the Republic, in the zenith of
|
||
his fame and power has reached his journey's end; and we are met,
|
||
here in the city of his birth, to pay our tribute to his worth and
|
||
work. He earned and held a proud position in the public thought. He
|
||
stood for independence, for courage, and above all for absolute
|
||
integrity, and his name was known and honored by many millions of
|
||
his fellow-men."
|
||
|
||
Add to this a few of those epigrammatic characterizations of
|
||
which Ingersoll was the consummate master, and we have a perfect
|
||
likeness of Conkling. What, for example, could more fittingly
|
||
describe the latter's steadfast moral courage than the following
|
||
exquisite rhythmical simile? --
|
||
|
||
"Nothing is grander than when a strong, intrepid man breaks
|
||
chains, levels walls and breasts the many-headed mob like some
|
||
great cliff that meets and mocks the innumerable billows of the
|
||
sea."
|
||
|
||
But who shall say that the reward which the following sentence
|
||
prophesies for such as Conkling will not fall, in full measure, to
|
||
Ingersoll himself? --
|
||
|
||
"When real history shall be written by the truthful and the
|
||
wise, these men, these kneelers at the shrines of chance and fraud,
|
||
these brazen idols worshiped once as gods, will be the very food of
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
72
|
||
|
||
INGERSOLL, A BIOGRAPHICAL APPRECIATION
|
||
|
||
scorn, while those who bore the burden of defeat, who earned and
|
||
kept their self-respect, who would not bow to man or men for place
|
||
or power, will wear upon their brows the laurel mingled with the
|
||
oak."
|
||
|
||
As an example of the fine, nobly eulogistic tone that pervades
|
||
the entire tribute, nothing could be better than the following, on
|
||
the imperious tectitade of the dead statesman: --
|
||
|
||
"Above his marvelous intellectual gifts -- above all place he
|
||
ever reached, -- above the ermine he refused, -- rises his
|
||
integrity like some great mountain peak -- and there it stands,
|
||
firm as the earth beneath, pure as the stars above."
|
||
|
||
If, as I trust, the reader shall have derived from the
|
||
preceding an adequate impression of the oratorical quality of the
|
||
tribute, as thus far considered, then, and then only, will he be
|
||
able justly to appreciate the majestic beauty and grandeur of its
|
||
peroration: --
|
||
|
||
"He was of the classic mould -- a figure from the antique
|
||
world. He had the pose of the great statues -- the pride and
|
||
bearing of the intellectual Greek, of the conquering Roman, and he
|
||
stood in the wide free air as though within his veins there flowed
|
||
the blood of a hundred kings.
|
||
|
||
"And as he lived he died. Proudly he entered the darkness --
|
||
or the dawn -- that we call death. Unshrinkingly he passed beyond
|
||
our horizon, beyond the twilight's purple hills, beyond the utmost
|
||
reach of human harm or help -- to that vast realm of silence or of
|
||
joy where the innumerable dwell, and he has left with us his wealth
|
||
of thought and deed -- the memory of a brave, imperious, honest
|
||
man, who bowed alone to death."
|
||
|
||
With his conclusion, ex-speaker General Husted and Senator
|
||
Coggeshall, respectively, moved and seconded that the legislature
|
||
tender to Ingersoll a vote of thanks for an oration which, "in
|
||
purity of style, in poetic expression, in cogency of statement, and
|
||
in brilliancy of rhetoric, * * * stands unrivaled among the
|
||
eulogies of either ancient or modern days. As effective as
|
||
Demosthenes, as polished as Cicero, as ornate as Burke, as
|
||
scholarly as Gladstone, the orator of the evening, in surpassing
|
||
others, has eclipsed himself." The vote was given with the same
|
||
rare sense which had prompted the invitation to deliver the
|
||
tribute.
|
||
|
||
As an oratorical feat the latter reflects even higher credit
|
||
on its author when we consider that, at the time of its production,
|
||
the Field-Gladstone-Manning-Ingersoll Controversy was in progress;
|
||
that, on the night previous to the delivery of the tribute,
|
||
Ingersoll was engaged in a public oral discussion of The
|
||
Limitations of Toleration, with Hon. Frederic R. Coudert and ex-
|
||
Governor Stewart L. Woodford, before the Nineteenth Century Club;
|
||
and that he was doubtless contemplating the Decoration Day Oration
|
||
which he was shortly to deliver in New York, and which, by the way,
|
||
proved to be second only, in power and beauty, to his own oration
|
||
of 1882.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Bank of Wisdom
|
||
Box 926, Louisville, KY 40201
|
||
73
|
||
|