The most unique experience in my life has been the dinners given to me by the Montauk Club of Brooklyn on my birthday. The Montauk is a social club of high standing, whose members are of professional and business life and different political and religious faiths.
Thirty years ago Mr. Charles A. Moore was president of the club. He was a prominent manufacturer and a gentleman of wide influence in political and social circles. Mr. McKinley offered him the position of secretary of the navy, which Mr. Moore declined. He came to me one day with a committee from the club, and said: "The Montauk wishes to celebrate your birthday. We know that it is on the 23d of April, and that you have two distinguished colleagues who also have the 23d as their birthday—Shakespeare and St. George. We do not care to include them, but desire only to celebrate yours."
The club has continued these celebrations for thirty years by an annual dinner. The ceremonial of the occasion is a reception, then dinner, and, after an introduction by the president, a speech by myself. To make a new speech every year which will be of interest to those present and those who read it, is not easy.
These festivities had a fortunate beginning. In thinking over what I should talk about at the first dinner, I decided to get some fun out of the municipality of Brooklyn by a picturesque description of its municipal conditions. It was charged in the newspapers that there had been serious graft in some public improvements which had been condoned by the authorities and excused by an act of the legislature. It had also been charged that the Common Council had been giving away valuable franchises to their favorites. Of course, this presented a fine field of contrast between ancient and modern times. In ancient times grateful citizens erected statues to eminent men who had deserved well of their country in military or civic life, but Brooklyn had improved upon the ancient model through the grant of public utilities. The speech caused a riot after the dinner as to its propriety, many taking the ground that it was a criticism, and, therefore, inappropriate to the occasion. However, the affair illustrated a common experience of mine that unexpected results will sometimes flow from a bit of humor, if the humor has concealed in it a stick of dynamite.
The Brooklyn pulpit, which is the most progressive in the world, took the matter up and aroused public discussion on municipal affairs. The result was the formation of a committee of one hundred citizens to investigate municipal conditions. They found that while the mayor and some other officials were high-toned and admirable officers, yet the general administration of the city government had in the course of years become so bad that there should be a general reformation. The reform movement was successful; it spread over to New York and there again succeeded, and the movement for municipal reform became general in the country.
The next anniversary dinner attracted an audience larger than the capacity of the club, and every one of the thirty has been an eminent success. For many years the affair has received wide publicity in the United States, and has sometimes been reported in foreign newspapers. I remember being in London with the late Lieutenant-Governor Woodruff, when we saw these head-lines at a news-stand on the Strand: "Speech by Chauncey Depew at his birthday dinner at the Montauk Club, Brooklyn." During this nearly third of a century the membership of the club has changed, sons having succeeded fathers and new members have been admitted, but the celebration seems to grow in interest.
During the last fourteen years the president of the club has been Mr. William H. English. He has done so much for the organization in every way that the members would like to have him as their executive officer for life. Mr. English is a splendid type of the American who is eminently successful in his chosen career, and yet has outside interest for the benefit of the public. Modest to a degree and avoiding publicity, he nevertheless is the motive power of many movements progressive and charitable.
Twenty-four years ago a company of public-spirited women in the city of Des Moines, Iowa, organized a club. They named it after me. For nearly a quarter of a century it has been an important factor in the civic life of Des Moines. It has with courage, intelligence, and independence done excellent work. At the time of its organization there were few if any such organizations in the country, and it may claim the position of pioneer in women's activity in public affairs.
Happily free from the internal difficulties and disputes which so often wreck voluntary associations, the Chauncey Depew Club is stronger than ever. It looks forward with confidence to a successful celebration of its quarter of a century.
I have never been able to visit the club, but have had with it frequent and most agreeable correspondence. It always remembers my birthday in the most gratifying way. I am grateful to its members for bestowing upon me one of the most pleasurable compliments of my life.
A public dinner is a fine form of testimonial. I have had many in my life, celebrating other things than my birthday. One of the most notable was given me by the citizens of Chicago in recognition of my efforts to make their great Columbian exhibition a success. Justice John M. Harlan presided, and distinguished men were present from different parts of the country and representing great interests. Probably the speech which excited the most comment was a radical attack of Andrew Carnegie on the government of Great Britain, in submitting to the authority of a king or a queen. Canada was represented by some of the high officials of that self-governing colony. The Canadians are more loyal to the English form of government than are the English themselves. My peppery Scotch friend aroused a Canadian official, who returned his assault with vigor and interest.
It is a very valuable experience for an American to attend the annual banquet of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris. The French Government recognizes the affair by having a company of their most picturesquely uniformed soldiers standing guard both inside and outside the hall. The highest officials of the French Government always attend and make speeches. The American Ambassador replies in a speech partly in English, and, if he is sufficiently equipped, partly in French. General Horace Porter and Henry White were equally happy both in their native language and in that of the French. The French statesmen, however, were so fond of Myron T. Herrick that they apparently not only grasped his cordiality but understood perfectly his eloquence. The honor has several times been assigned to me of making the American speech in unadulterated American. The French may not have understood, but with their quick apprehension the applause or laughter of the Americans was instantly succeeded by equal manifestations on the part of the French.
Among the many things which we have inherited from our English ancestry are public dinners and after-dinner speeches. The public dinner is of importance in Great Britain and utilized for every occasion. It is to the government the platform where the ministers can lay frankly before the country matters which they could not develop in the House of Commons. Through the dinner speech they open the way and arouse public attention for measures which they intend to propose to Parliament, and in this way bring the pressure of public opinion to their support.
In the same way every guild and trade have their festive functions with serious purpose, and so have religious, philanthropic, economic, and sociological movements. We have gone quite far in this direction, but have not perfected the system as they have on the other side. I have been making after-dinner speeches for sixty years to all sorts and conditions of people, and on almost every conceivable subject. I have found these occasions of great value because under the good-fellowship of the occasion an unpopular truth can be sugar-coated with humor and received with applause, while in the processes of digestion the next day it is working with the audience and through the press in the way the pill was intended. A popular audience will forgive almost anything with which they do not agree, if the humorous way in which it is put tickles their risibilities.
Mr. Gladstone was very fine at the lord mayor's dinner at Guild Hall, where the prime minister develops his policies. So it was with Lord Salisbury and Balfour, but the prince of after-dinner speakers in England is Lord Rosebery. He has the humor, the wit, and the artistic touch which fascinates and enraptures his audience.
I have met in our country all the men of my time who have won fame in this branch of public address. The most remarkable in effectiveness and inspiration was Henry Ward Beecher. A banquet was always a success if it could have among its speakers William M. Evarts, Joseph H. Choate, James S. Brady, Judge John R. Brady, General Horace Porter, or Robert G. Ingersoll.
After General Grant settled in New York he was frequently a guest at public dinners and always produced an impression by simple, direct, and effective oratory.
General Sherman, on the other hand, was an orator as well as a fighter. He never seemed to be prepared, but out of the occasion would give soldierly, graphic, and picturesque presentations of thought and description.
Not to have heard on these occasions Robert G. Ingersoll was to have missed being for the evening under the spell of a magician. I have been frequently asked if I could remember occasions of this kind which were of more than ordinary interest.
After-dinner oratory, while most attractive at the time, is evanescent, but some incidents are interesting in memory. At the time of Queen Victoria's jubilee I was present where a representative of Canada was called upon for a speech. With the exception of the Canadian and myself the hosts and guests were all English. My Canadian friend enlarged upon the wonders of his country. A statement of its marvels did not seem sufficient for him unless it was augmented by comparisons with other countries to the glory of Canada, and so he compared Canada with the United States. Canada had better and more enduring institutions, she had a more virile, intelligent, and progressive population, and she had protected herself, as the United States did not, against undesirable immigration, and in everything which constituted an up-to-date, progressive, healthy, and hopeful commonwealth she was far in advance of the United States.
I was called upon immediately afterwards and said I would agree with the distinguished gentleman from Canada that in one thing at least Canada was superior to the United States, and it was that she had far more land, but it was mostly ice. I regret to remember that my Canadian friend lost his temper.
One of the historical dinners of New York, which no one will forget who was there, was just after the close of the Civil War, or, as my dear old friend, Colonel Watterson, called it, "The War between the States." The principal guests were General Sherman and Henry W. Grady of Atlanta, Ga. General Sherman, in his speech, described the triumphant return of the Union Army to Washington, its review by the President, and then its officers and men returning to private life and resuming their activities and industries as citizens. It was a word-picture of wonderful and startling picturesqueness and power and stirred an audience, composed largely of veterans who had been participants both in the battles and in the parades, to the highest degree of enthusiasm. Mr. Grady followed. He was a young man with rare oratorical gifts. He described the return of the Confederate soldiers to their homes after the surrender at Appomattox. They had been four years fighting and marching. They were ragged and poor. They returned to homes and farms, many of which had been devastated. They had no capital, and rarely animals or farming utensils necessary to begin again. But with superb courage, not only on their own part but with the assistance of their wives, sisters, and daughters, they made the desert land flourish and resurrected the country.
This remarkable description of Grady, which I only outline, came as a counterpart to the triumphant epic of General Sherman. The effect was electric, and beyond almost any that have ever occurred in New York or anywhere, and Grady sprang into international fame.
Joseph H. Choate was a most dangerous fellow speaker to his associates who spoke before him. I had with him many encounters during fifty years, and many times enjoyed being the sufferer by his wit and humor. On one occasion Choate won the honors of the evening by an unexpected attack. There is a village in western New York which is named after me. The enterprising inhabitants, boring for what might be under the surface of their ground, discovered natural gas. According to American fashion, they immediately organized a company and issued a prospectus for the sale of the stock. The prospectus fell into the hands of Mr. Choate. With great glee he read it and then with emphasis the name of the company: "The Depew Natural Gas Company, Limited," and waving the prospectus at me shouted: "Why limited?"
There have been two occasions in Mr. Choate's after-dinner speeches much commented upon both in this country and abroad. As I was present on both evenings, it seems the facts ought to be accurately stated. The annual dinner of the "Friendly Sons of St. Patrick" occurred during one of the years when the Home Rule question was most acute in England and actively discussed here. At the same time our Irish fellow citizens, with their talent for public life, had captured all the offices in New York City. They had the mayor, the majority of the Board of Aldermen, and a large majority of the judges. When Mr. Choate spoke he took up the Home Rule question, and, without indicating his own views, said substantially: "We Yankees used to be able to govern ourselves, but you Irish have come here and taken the government away from us. You have our entire city administration in your hands, and you do with us as you like. We are deprived of Home Rule. Now what you are clamoring for both at home and abroad is Home Rule for Ireland. With such demonstrated ability in capturing the greatest city on the western continent, and one of the greatest in the world, why don't you go back to Ireland and make, as you would, Home Rule there a success?"
I was called a few minutes afterwards to a conference of the leading Irishmen present. I was an honorary member of that society, and they were in a high state of indignation. The more radical thought that Mr. Choate's speech should be resented at once. However, those who appreciated its humor averted hostile action, but Mr. Choate was never invited to an Irish banquet again.
The second historical occasion was when the Scotch honored their patron Saint, St. Andrew. The attendance was greater than ever before, and the interest more intense because the Earl of Aberdeen was present. The earl was at that time Governor-General of Canada, but to the Scotchmen he was much more than that, because he was the chief of the Clan Gordon. The earl came to the dinner in full Highland costume. Lady Aberdeen and the ladies of the vice-regal court were in the gallery. I sat next to the earl and Choate sat next to me. Choate said: "Chauncey, are Aberdeen's legs bare?" I looked under the table-cloth and discovered that they were naturally so because of his costume. I answered: "Choate, they are."
I thought nothing of it until Choate began his speech, in which he said: "I was not fully informed by the committee of the importance of the occasion. I did not know that the Earl of Aberdeen was to be here as a guest of honor. I was especially and unfortunately ignorant that he was coming in the full panoply of his great office as chief of Clan Gordon. If I had known that I would have left my trousers at home."
Aberdeen enjoyed it, the ladies in the gallery were amused, but the Scotch were mad, and Choate lost invitations to future Scotch dinners.
Few appreciate the lure of the metropolis. It attracts the successful to win greater success with its larger opportunities. It has resistless charm with the ambitious and the enterprising. New York, with its suburbs, which are really a part of itself, is the largest city in the world. It is the only true cosmopolitan one. It has more Irish than any city in Ireland, more Germans and Italians than any except the largest cities in Germany or Italy. It has more Southerners than are gathered in any place in any Southern State, and the same is true of Westerners and those from the Pacific coast and New England, except in Chicago, San Francisco, or Boston. There is also a large contingent from the West Indies, South America, and Canada.
The people who make up the guests at a great dinner are the survival of the fittest of these various settlers in New York. While thousands fail and go back home or drop by the way, these men have made their way by superior ability, foresight, and adaptability through the fierce competitions of the great city. They are unusually keen-witted and alert. For the evening of the banquet they leave behind their business and its cares and are bent on being entertained, amused, and instructed. They are a most catholic audience, broad-minded, hospitable, and friendly to ideas whether they are in accord with them or not, providing they are well presented. There is one thing they will not submit to, and that is being bored.
These functions are usually over by midnight, and rarely last so long; while out in the country and in other towns, it is no unusual thing to have a dinner with speeches run along until the early hours of the next morning. While public men, politicians, and aspiring orators seek their opportunities upon this platform in New York, few succeed and many fail. It is difficult for a stranger to grasp the situation and adapt himself at once to its atmosphere. I have narrated in preceding pages some remarkable successes, and will give a few instances of very able and distinguished men who lost touch of their audiences.
One of the ablest men in the Senate was Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama. I was fond of him personally and admired greatly his many and varied talents. He was a most industrious and admirable legislator, and a debater of rare influence. He was a master of correct and scholarly English, and one of the very few who never went to the reporters' room to correct his speeches. As they were always perfect, he let them stand as they were delivered.
Senator Morgan was a great card on a famous occasion among the many well-known men who were also to speak. Senator Elihu Root presided with his usual distinction. Senator Morgan had a prepared speech which he read. It was unusually long, but very good. On account of his reputation the audience was, for such an audience, wonderfully patient and frequent and enthusiastic in its applause. Mistaking his favorable reception, Senator Morgan, after he had finished the manuscript, started in for an extended talk. After the hour had grown to nearly two, the audience became impatient, and the senator, again mistaking its temper, thought they had become hostile and announced that at many times and many places he had been met with opposition, but that he could not be put down or silenced. Mr. Root did the best he could to keep the peace, but the audience, who were anxious to hear the other speakers, gave up hope and began to leave, with the result that midnight saw an empty hall with a presiding officer and an orator.
At another great political dinner I sat beside Governor Oglesby, of Illinois. He was famous as a war governor and as a speaker. There were six speakers on the dais, of whom I was one. Happily, my turn came early. The governor said to me: "How much of the gospel can these tenderfeet stand?" "Well, Governor," I answered, "there are six speakers to-night, and the audience will not allow the maximum of time occupied to be more than thirty minutes. Any one who exceeds that will lose his crowd and, worse than that, he may be killed by the eloquent gentlemen who are bursting with impatience to get the floor, and who are to follow him."
"Why," said the governor, "I don't see how any one can get started in thirty minutes."
"Well," I cautioned, "please do not be too long."
When the midnight hour struck the hall was again practically empty, the governor in the full tide of his speech, which evidently would require about three hours, and the chairman declared the meeting adjourned.
Senator Foraker, of Ohio, who was one of the appointed speakers, told me the next morning that at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he was stopping, he was just getting into bed when the governor burst into his room and fairly shouted: "Foraker, no wonder New York is almost always wrong. You saw to-night that it would not listen to the truth. Now I want to tell you what I intended to say." He was shouting with impassioned eloquence, his voice rising until, through the open windows, it reached Madison Square Park, when the watchman burst in and said: "Sir, the guests in this hotel will not stand that any longer, but if you must finish your speech I will take you out in the park."
During Cleveland's administration one of the New York banquets became a national affair. The principal speaker was the secretary of the interior, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who afterwards became United States senator and justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Lamar was one of the ablest and most cultured men in public life, and a fine orator. I was called upon so late that it was impossible to follow any longer the serious discussions of the evening, and what the management and the audience wanted from me was some fun.
Lamar, with his Johnsonian periods and the lofty style of Edmund Burke, furnished an opportunity for a little pleasantry. He came to me, when I had finished, in great alarm and said: "My appearance here is not an ordinary one and does not permit humor. I am secretary of the interior, and the representative of the president and his administration. My speech is really the message of the president to the whole country, and I wish you would remedy any impression which the country might otherwise receive from your humor."
This I was very glad to do, but it was an instance of which I have met many, of a very distinguished and brilliant gentleman taking himself too seriously. At another rather solemn function of this kind I performed the same at the request of the management, but with another protest from the orator and his enmity.
In reminiscing, after he retired from the presidency, Mr. Cleveland spoke to me of his great respect and admiration for Mr. Lamar. Cleveland's speeches were always short. His talent was for compression and concentration, and he could not understand the necessity for an effort of great length. He told me that while Justice Lamar was secretary of the interior he came to him one day and said: "Mr. President, I have accepted an invitation to deliver an address in the South, and as your administration may be held responsible for what I say, I wish you would read it over and make any corrections or suggestions."
Mr. Cleveland said the speech was extraordinarily long though very good, and when he returned it to Secretary Lamar he said to him: "That speech will take at least three hours to deliver. A Northern audience would never submit to over an hour. Don't you think you had better cut it down?" The secretary replied: "No, Mr. President; a Southern audience expects three hours, and would be better satisfied with five."
Justice Miller, one of the ablest of the judges of the Supreme Court at that time, was the principal speaker on another occasion. He was ponderous to a degree, and almost equalled in the emphasis of his utterances, what was once said of Daniel Webster, that every word weighed twelve pounds. I followed him. The Attorney-General of the United States, who went back to Washington the next day with Justice Miller, told me that as soon as they had got on the train the justice commenced to complain that I had wholly misunderstood his speech, and that no exaggeration of interpretation would warrant what I said. The judge saw no humor in my little effort to relieve the situation, and took it as a reply of opposing counsel. He said that the justice took it up from another phase after leaving Philadelphia, and resumed his explanation from another angle as to what he meant after they reached Baltimore. When the train arrived at its destination and they separated in the Washington station, the justice turned to the attorney-general and said: "Damn Depew! Good-night."
Such are the perils of one who good-naturedly yields to the importunities of a committee of management who fear the failure with their audience of their entertainment.
The great dinners of New York are the Chamber of Commerce, which is a national function, as were also for a long time, during the presidency of Mr. Choate, those of the New England Society. The annual banquets of the Irish, Scotch, English, Welsh, Holland, St. Nicholas, and the French, are also most interesting, and sometimes by reason of the presence of a national or international figure, assume great importance. The dinner which the Pilgrims Society tenders to the British ambassador gives him an opportunity, without the formalities and conventions of his office, of speaking his mind both to the United States and to his own people.
The annual banquets of the State societies are now assuming greater importance. Each State has thousands of men who have been or still are citizens, but who live in New York. Those dinners attract the leading politicians of their several States. It is a platform for the ambitious to be president and sometimes succeeds.
Garfield made a great impression at one of these State dinners, so did Foraker, and at the last dinner of the Ohio Society the star was Senator Warren G. Harding. On one occasion, when McKinley and Garfield were present, in the course of my speech I made a remark which has since been adopted as a sort of motto by the Buckeye State. Ohio, I think, has passed Virginia as a mother of presidents. It is remarkable that the candidates of both great parties are now of that State. I said in the closing of my speech, alluding to the distinguished guests and their prospects: "Some men have greatness thrust upon them, some are born great, and some are born in Ohio."
One of the greatest effects produced by a speech was by Henry Ward Beecher at an annual dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick. At the time, the Home Rule question was more than ordinarily acute and Fenianism was rabid. While Mr. Beecher had great influence upon his audience, his audience had equal influence upon him. As he enlarged upon the wrongs of Ireland the responses became more enthusiastic and finally positively savage. This stirred the orator up till he gave the wildest approval to direct action and revolution, with corresponding cheers from the diners, standing and cheering. Mr. Beecher was explaining that speech for about a year afterwards. I was a speaker on the same platform.
Mr. Beecher always arrived late, and everybody thought it was to get the applause as he came in but he explained to me that it was due to his method of preparation. He said his mind would not work freely until three hours after he had eaten. Many speakers have told me the same thing. He said when he had a speech to make at night, whether it was at a dinner or elsewhere, that he took his dinner in the middle of the day, and then a glass of milk and crackers at five o'clock, with nothing afterwards. Then in the evening his mind was perfectly clear and under absolute control.
The Lotos Club has been for fifty years to New York what the Savage Club is to London. It attracts as its guests the most eminent men of letters who visit this country. Its entertainments are always successful. For twenty-nine years it had for its president Mr. Frank R. Lawrence, a gentleman with a genius for introducing distinguished strangers with most felicitous speeches, and a committee who selected with wonderful judgment the other speakers of the evening. A successor to Mr. Lawrence, and of equal merit, has been found in Chester S. Lord, now president of the Lotos Club. Mr. Lord was for more than a third of a century managing editor of the New York Sun, and is now chancellor of the University of the State of New York.
I remember one occasion where the most tactful man who ever appeared before his audience slipped his trolley, and that was Bishop Potter. The bishop was a remarkably fine preacher and an unusually attractive public speaker and past master of all the social amenities of life. The guest of the evening was the famous Canon Kingsley, author of "Hypatia" and other works at that time universally popular. The canon had the largest and reddest nose one ever saw. The bishop, among the pleasantries of his introduction, alluded to this headlight of religion and literature. The canon fell from grace and never forgave the bishop.
On Lotos nights I have heard at their best Lord Houghton, statesman and poet, Mark Twain, Stanley the explorer, and I consider it one of the distinctions as well as pleasures of my life to have been a speaker at the Lotos on more occasions than any one else during the last half century.
In Mr. Joseph Pulitzer's early struggles with his paper, the New York World, the editorial columns frequently had very severe attacks on Mr. William H. Vanderbilt and the New York Central Railroad. They were part, of course, of attacks upon monopoly. I was frequently included in these criticisms.
The Lotos Club gave a famous dinner to George Augustus Sala, the English writer and journalist. I found myself seated beside Mr. Pulitzer, whom I had never met. When I was called upon to speak I introduced, in what I had to say about the distinguished guest, this bit of audacity. I said substantially, in addition to Mr. Sala: "We have with us to-night a great journalist who comes to the metropolis from the wild and woolly West. After he had purchased the World he came to me and said, 'Chauncey Depew, I have a scheme, which I am sure will benefit both of us. Everybody is envious of the prestige of the New York Central and the wealth of Mr. Vanderbilt. You are known as his principal adviser. Now, if in my general hostility to monopoly I include Mr. Vanderbilt and the New York Central as principal offenders, I must include you, because you are the champion in your official relationship of the corporation and of its policies and activities. I do not want you to have any feeling against me because of this. The policy will secure for the World everybody who is not a stockholder in the New York Central, or does not possess millions of money. When Mr. Vanderbilt finds that you are attacked, he is a gentleman and broad-minded enough to compensate you and will grant to you both significant promotion and a large increase in salary.'" Then I added: "Well, gentlemen, I have only to say that Mr. Pulitzer's experiment has been eminently successful. He has made his newspaper a recognized power and a notable organ of public opinion; its fortunes are made and so are his, and, in regard to myself, all he predicted has come true, both in promotion and in enlargement of income." When I sat down Mr. Pulitzer grasped me by the hand and said: "Chauncey Depew, you are a mighty good fellow. I have been misinformed about you. You will have friendly treatment hereafter in any newspaper which I control."
The Gridiron Club of Washington, because of both its ability and genius and especially its national position, furnishes a wonderful platform for statesmen. Its genius in creating caricatures and fake pageants of current political situations at the capital and its public men is most remarkable. The president always attends, and most of the Cabinet and justices of the Supreme Court. The ambassadors and representatives of the leading governments represented in Washington are guests, and so are the best-known senators and representatives of the time. The motto of the club is "Reporters are never present. Ladies always present." Though the association is made up entirely of reporters, the secrecy is so well kept that the speakers are unusually frank.
There was a famous contest one night there, however, between President Roosevelt and Senator Foraker, who at the time were intensely antagonistic, which can never be forgotten by those present. There was a delightful interplay between William J. Bryan and President Roosevelt, when Bryan charged the president with stealing all his policies and ideas.
If the speaker grasped the peculiarities of his audience and its temperament, his task was at once the most difficult and the most delightful, and my friend, Mr. Arthur Dunn, has performed most useful service in embalming a portion of Gridiron history in his volume, "Gridiron Nights."
Pierpont Morgan, the greatest of American bankers, was much more than a banker. He had a wonderful collection in his library and elsewhere of rare books and works of art. He was always delightful on the social side. He was very much pleased when he was elected president of the New England Society. The annual dinner that year was a remarkably brilliant affair. It was the largest in the history of the organization. The principal speaker was William Everett, son of the famous Edward Everett and himself a scholar of great acquirements and culture. His speech was another evidence of a very superior man mistaking his audience. He was principal of the Adams Academy, that great preparatory institution for Harvard University, and he had greatly enlarged its scope and usefulness.
Mr. Everett evidently thought that the guests of the New England Society of New York would be composed of men of letters, educators, and Harvard graduates. Instead of that, the audience before him were mainly bankers and successful business men whose Puritan characteristics had enabled them to win great success in the competitions in the great metropolis in every branch of business. They were out for a good time and little else.
Mr. Everett produced a ponderous mass of manuscript and began reading on the history of New England education and the influence upon it of the Cambridge School. He had more than an hour of material and lost his audience in fifteen minutes. No efforts of the chairman could bring them to attention, and finally the educator lost that control of himself which he was always teaching to the boys and threw his manuscript at the heads of the reporters. From their reports in their various newspapers the next day, they did not seem to have absorbed the speech by this original method.
Choate and I were both to speak, and Choate came first. As usual, he threw a brick at me. He mentioned that a reporter had come to him and said: "Mr. Choate, I have Depew's speech carefully prepared, with the applause and laughter already in. I want yours." Of course, no reporter had been to either of us. Mr. Choate had in his speech an unusual thing for him, a long piece of poetry. When my turn came to reply I said: "The reporter came to me, as Mr. Choate has said, and made the remark: 'I already have Choate's speech. It has in it a good deal of poetry.' I asked the reporter: 'From what author is the poetry taken?' He answered: 'I do not know the author, but the poetry is so bad I think Choate has written it himself.'"
Mr. Choate told me a delightful story of his last interview with Mr. Evarts before he sailed for Europe to take up his ambassadorship at the Court of St. James. "I called," he said, "on Mr. Evarts to bid him good-by. He had been confined to his room by a fatal illness for a long time. 'Choate,' he said, 'I am delighted with your appointment. You eminently deserve it, and you are pre-eminently fit for the place. You have won the greatest distinction in our profession, and have harvested enough of its rewards to enable you to meet the financial responsibilities of this post without anxiety. You will have a most brilliant and useful career in diplomacy, but I fear I will never see you again.'"
Mr. Choate said: "Mr. Evarts, we have had a delightful partnership of over forty years, and when I retire from diplomacy and resume the practice of the law I am sure you and I will go on together again for many years in the same happy old way."
Evarts replied: "No, Choate, I fear that cannot be. When I think what a care I am to all my people, lying so helpless here, and that I can do nothing any more to repay their kindness, or to help in the world, I feel like the boy who wrote from school to his mother a letter of twenty pages, and then added after the end: 'P. S. Dear mother, please excuse my longevity.'"
Where one has a reputation as a speaker and is also known to oblige friends and to be hardly able to resist importunities, the demands upon him are very great. They are also sometimes original and unique.
At one time, the day before Christmas, a representative of the New York World came to see me, and said: "We are going to give a dinner to-night to the tramps who gather between ten and eleven o'clock at the Vienna Restaurant, opposite the St. Denis Hotel, to receive the bread which the restaurant distributes at that hour." This line was there every night standing in the cold waiting their turn. I went down to the hotel, and a young man and young lady connected with the newspaper crossed the street and picked out from the line a hundred guests.
It was a remarkable assemblage. The dinner provided was a beautiful and an excellent one for Christmas. As I heard their stories, there was among them a representative of almost every department of American life. Some were temporarily and others permanently down and out. Every one of the learned professions was represented and many lines of business. The most of them were in this condition, because they had come to New York to make their way, and had struggled until their funds were exhausted, and then they were ashamed to return home and confess their failure.
I presided at this remarkable banquet and made not only one speech but several. By encouraging the guests we had several excellent addresses from preachers without pulpits, lawyers without clients, doctors without patients, engineers without jobs, teachers without schools, and travellers without funds. One man arose and said: "Chauncey Depew, the World has given us such an excellent dinner, and you have given us such a merry Christmas Eve, we would like to shake hands with you as we go out."
I had long learned the art of shaking hands with the public. Many a candidate has had his hands crushed and been permanently hurt by the vise-like grip of an ardent admirer or a vicious opponent. I remember General Grant complaining of this, of how he suffered, and I told him of my discovery of grasping the hand first and dropping it quickly.
The people about me were looking at these men as they came along, to see if there was any possible danger. Toward the end of the procession one man said to me: "Chauncey Depew, I don't belong to this crowd. I am well enough off and can take care of myself. I am an anarchist. My business is to stir up unrest and discontent, and that brings me every night to mingle with the crowd waiting for their dole of bread from Fleischmann's bakery. You do more than any one else in the whole country to create good feeling and dispel unrest, and you have done a lot of it to-night. I made up my mind to kill you right here, but you are such an infernal good fellow that I have not the heart to do it, so here's my hand."
On one occasion I received an invitation to address a sociological society which was to meet at the house of one of the most famous entertainers in New York. My host said that Edward Atkinson, the well-known New England writer, philosopher, and sociologist, would address the meeting. When I arrived at the house I found Atkinson in despair. The audience were young ladies in full evening dress and young men in white vests, white neckties, and swallow-tails. There was also a band present. We were informed that this society had endeavored to mingle instruction with pleasure, and it really was a dancing club, but they had conceived the idea of having something serious and instructive before the ball.
Mr. Atkinson said to me: "What won me to come here is that in Boston we have a society of the same name. It is composed of very serious people who are engaged in settlement and sociological work. They are doing their best to improve the conditions of the young women and young men who are in clerical and other employment. I have delivered several addresses before that society, and before the audiences which they gather, on how to live comfortably and get married on the smallest possible margin. Now, for instance, for my lecture here to-night I have on a ready-made suit of clothes, for which I paid yesterday five dollars. In that large boiler there is a stove which I have invented. In the oven of the stove is beef and various vegetables, and to heat it is a kerosene lamp with a clockwork attached. A young man or a young woman, or a young married couple go to the market and buy the cheap cuts of beef, and then, according to my instructions, they put it in the stove with the vegetables, light the lamp, set the clockwork and go to their work. When they return at five, six, or seven o'clock they find a very excellent and very cheap dinner all ready to be served. Now, of what use is my five-dollar suit of clothes and my fifty-cent dinner for this crowd of butterflies?"
However, Mr. Atkinson and I made up our minds to talk to them as if they needed it or would need it some day or other, and they were polite enough to ask questions and pretend to enjoy it. I understand that afterwards at the midnight supper there was more champagne and more hilarity than at previous gatherings of this sociological club.
During one of our presidential campaigns some young men came up from the Bowery to see me. They said: "We have a very hard time down in our district. The crowd is a tough one but intelligent, and we think would be receptive of the truth if they could hear it put to them in an attractive form. We will engage a large theatre attached to a Bowery beer saloon if you will come down and address the meeting. The novelty of your appearance will fill the theatre."
I knew there was considerable risk, and yet it was a great opportunity. I believe that in meeting a crowd of that sort one should appear as they expect him to look when addressing the best of audiences. These people are very proud, and they resent any attempt on your part to be what they know you are not, but that you are coming down to their level by assuming a character which you presume to be theirs. So I dressed with unusual care, and when I went on the platform a short-sleeved, short-haired genius in the theatre shouted: "Chauncey thinks he is in Carnegie Hall."
The famous Tim Sullivan, who was several times a state senator and congressman, and a mighty good fellow, was the leader of the Bowery and controlled its political actions. He came to see me and said: "I hope you will withdraw from that appointment. I do not want you to come down there. In the first place, I cannot protect you, and I don't think it is safe. In the second place, you are so well known and popular among our people that I am afraid you will produce an impression, and if you get away with it that will hurt our machine."
In the course of my speech a man arose whom I knew very well as a district leader, and who was frequently in my office, seeking positions for his constituents and other favors. That night he was in his shirt-sleeves among the boys. With the old volunteer fireman's swagger and the peculiar patois of that part of New York, he said: "Chauncey Depew, you have no business here. You are the president of the New York Central Railroad, ain't you, hey? You are a rich man, ain't you, hey? We are poor boys. You don't know us and can't teach us anything. You had better get out while you can."
My reply was this: "My friend, I want a little talk with you. I began life very much as you did. Nobody helped me. I was a country boy and my capital was this head," and I slapped it, "these legs," and I slapped them, "these hands," and I slapped them, "and by using them as best I could I have become just what you say I am and have got where you will never arrive."
A shirt-sleeved citizen jumped up from the audience and shouted: "Go ahead, Chauncey, you're a peach." That characterization of a peach went into the newspapers and was attached to me wherever I appeared for many years afterwards, not only in this country but abroad. It even found a place in the slang column of the great dictionaries of the English language. The result of the meeting, however, was a free discussion in the Bowery, and for the first time in its history that particular district was carried by the Republicans.
After their triumph in the election I gave a dinner in the Union League Club to the captains of the election districts. There were about a hundred of them. The district captains were all in their usual business suits, and were as sharp, keen, intelligent, and up-to-date young men as one could wish to meet. The club members whom I had invited to meet my guests were, of course, in conventional evening dress. The novelty of the occasion was so enjoyed by them that they indulged with more than usual liberality in the fluids and fizz and became very hilarious. Not one of the district captains touched a drop of wine.
While the club members were a little frightened at the idea of these East-siders coming, my guests understood and met every convention of the occasion before, during, and after dinner, as if it was an accustomed social function with them. The half dozen who made speeches showed a grasp of the political questions of the hour and an ability to put their views before an audience which was an exhibition of a high order of intelligence and self-culture.
In selecting a few out-of-the-way occasions which were also most interesting and instructive, I recall one with a society which prided itself upon its absence of narrowness and its freedom of thought and discussion. The speakers were most critical of all that is generally accepted and believed. Professor John Fiske, the historian, was the most famous man present, and very critical of the Bible. My good mother had brought me up on the Bible and instilled in me the deepest reverence for the good book. The criticism of the professor stirred me to a rejoinder. I, of course, was in no way equal to meeting him, with his vast erudition and scholarly accomplishments. I could only give what the Bible critic would regard as valueless, a sledge-hammer expression of faith. Somebody took the speech down. Doctor John Hall, the famous preacher and for many years pastor of the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, told me that the Bible and the church societies in England had put the speech into a leaflet, and were distributing many millions of them in the British Isles.
It is singular what vogue and circulation a story of the hour will receive. Usually these decorations of a speech die with the occasion. There was fierce rivalry when it was decided to celebrate the four hundredth anniversary of the landing of Columbus in America, between New York and Chicago, as to which should have the exhibition. Of course the Western orators were not modest in the claims which they made for the City by the Lakes. To dampen their ardor I embroidered the following story, which took wonderfully when told in my speech.
It was at the Eagle Hotel in Peekskill, at which it was said George Washington stopped many times as a guest during the Revolutionary War, where in respect to his memory they preserved the traditions of the Revolutionary period. At that time the bill of fare was not printed, but the waiter announced to the guest what would be served, if asked for. A Chicago citizen was dining at the hotel. He ordered each of the many items announced to him by the waiter. When he came to the deserts the waiter said: "We have mince-pie, apple-pie, pumpkin-pie, and custard-pie." The Chicago man ordered mince-pie, apple-pie, and pumpkin-pie. The disgusted waiter remarked: "What is the matter with the custard?" Alongside me sat a very well-known English gentleman of high rank, who had come to this country on a sort of missionary and evangelistic errand. Of course, he was as solemn as the task he had undertaken, which was to convert American sinners. He turned suddenly to me and, in a loud voice, asked: "What was the matter with the custard-pie?" The story travelled for years, was used for many purposes, was often murdered in the narration, but managed to survive, and was told to me as an original joke by one of the men I met at the convention last June in Chicago.
After Chicago received from Congress the appointment I did all I could to help the legislation and appropriations necessary. The result was that when I visited the city as an orator at the opening of the exhibition I was voted the freedom of the city, was given a great reception, and among other things reviewed the school children who paraded in my honor.
The Yale alumni of New York City had for many years an organization. In the early days the members met very infrequently at a dinner. This was a formal affair, and generally drew a large gathering, both of the local alumni and from the college and the country. These meetings were held at Delmonico's, then located in Fourteenth Street. The last was so phenomenally dull that there were no repetitions.
The speakers were called by classes, and the oldest in graduation had the platform. The result was disastrous. These old men all spoke too long, and it was an endless stream of platitudes and reminiscences of forgotten days until nearly morning. Then an inspiration of the chairman led him to say: "I think it might be well to have a word from the younger graduates."
There was a unanimous call for a well-known humorist named Styles. His humor was aided by a startling appearance of abundant red hair, an aggressive red mustache, and eyes which seemed to push his glasses off his nose. Many of the speakers, owing to the imperfection of the dental art in those days, indicated their false teeth by their trouble in keeping them in place, and the whistling it gave to their utterances. One venerable orator in his excitement dropped his into his tumbler in the midst of his address.
Styles said to this tired audience: "At this early hour in the morning I will not attempt to speak, but I will tell a story. Down at Barnegat, N. J., where I live, our neighbors are very fond of apple-jack. One of them while in town had his jug filled, and on the way home saw a friend leaning over the gate and looking so thirsty that he stopped and handed over his jug with an offer of its hospitality. After sampling it the neighbor continued the gurgling as the jug rose higher and higher, until there was not a drop left in it. The indignant owner said: 'You infernal hog, why did you drink up all my apple-jack?' His friend answered: 'I beg your pardon, Job, but I could not bite off the tap, because I have lost all my teeth.'" The aptness of the story was the success of the evening.
Some years afterwards there was a meeting of the alumni to form a live association. Among those who participated in the organization were William Walter Phelps, afterwards member of Congress and minister to Austria; Judge Henry E. Howland; John Proctor Clarke, now chief justice of the Appellate Division; James R. Sheffield (several years later) now president of the Union League Club; and Isaac Bromley, one of the editors of the New York Tribune, one of the wittiest writers of his time, and many others who have since won distinction. They elected me president, and I continued such by successive elections for ten years.
The association met once a month and had a serious paper read, speeches, a simple supper, and a social evening. These monthly gatherings became a feature and were widely reported in the press. We could rely upon one or more of the faculty, and there was always to be had an alumnus of national reputation from abroad. We had a formal annual dinner, which was more largely attended than almost any function of the kind in the city, and, because of the variety and excellence of the speaking, always very enjoyable.
The Harvard and Princeton alumni also had an association at that time, with annual dinners, and it was customary for the officers of each of these organizations to be guests of the one which gave the dinner. The presidents of the colleges represented always came. Yale could rely upon President Dwight, Harvard upon President Eliot, and Princeton upon President McCosh.
Of course, the interchanges between the representatives of the different colleges were as exciting and aggressive as their football and baseball contests are to-day. I recall one occasion of more than usual interest. It was the Princeton dinner, and the outstanding figure of the occasion was that most successful and impressive of college executives, President McCosh. He spoke with a broad Scotch accent and was in every sense a literalist. Late in the evening Mr. Beaman, a very brilliant lawyer and partner of Evarts and Choate, who was president of the Harvard Alumni Association, said to me: "These proceedings are fearfully prosaic and highbrow. When you are called, you attack President McCosh, and I will defend him." So in the course of my remarks, which were highly complimentary to Princeton and its rapid growth under President McCosh, I spoke of its remarkable success in receiving gifts and legacies, which were then pouring into its treasury every few months, and were far beyond anything which came either to Yale or Harvard, though both were in great need. Then I hinted that possibly this flow of riches was due to the fact that President McCosh had such an hypnotic influence over the graduates of Princeton and their fathers, mothers, and wives that none of them felt there was a chance of a heavenly future unless Princeton was among the heirs.
Mr. Beaman was very indignant and with the continuing approval and applause of the venerable doctor made a furious attack upon me. His defense of the president was infinitely worse than my attack. He alleged that I had intimated that the doctor kept tab on sick alumni of wealth and their families, and at the critical moment there would be a sympathetic call from the doctor, and, while at the bedside he administered comfort and consolation, yet he made it plain to the patient that he could not hope for the opening of the pearly gates or the welcome of St. Peter unless Princeton was remembered. Then Beaman, in a fine burst of oratory, ascribed this wonderful prosperity not to any personal effort or appeal, but because the sons of Princeton felt such reverence and gratitude for their president that they were only too glad of an opportunity to contribute to the welfare of the institution.
The moment Beaman sat down the doctor arose, and with great intensity expressed his thanks and gratitude to the eloquent president of the Harvard alumni, and then shouted: "I never, never, never solicited a gift for Princeton from a dying man. I never, never, never sat by the bedside of a dying woman and held up the terrors of hell and the promises of heaven, according to the disposition she made of her estate. I never, never looked with unsympathetic and eager anticipation whenever any of our wealthy alumni appeared in ill health."
The doctor, however, retaliated subsequently. He invited me to deliver a lecture before the college, and entertained me most delightfully at his house. It was a paid admission, and when I left in the morning he said: "I want to express to you on behalf of our college our thanks. We raised last evening through your lecture enough to fit our ball team for its coming contest with Yale." In that contest Princeton was triumphant.
The Yale Alumni Association subsequently evoluted into the Yale Club of New York, which has in every way been phenomenally prosperous. It is a factor of national importance in supporting Yale and keeping alive everywhere appreciation and enthusiasm for and practice of Yale spirit.
My class of 1856 at Yale numbered ninety-seven on graduation. Only six of us survive. In these pages I have had a continuous class meeting. Very few, if any, of my associates in the New York Legislature of 1862 and 1863 are alive, and none of the State officers who served with me in the succeeding years. There is no one left in the service who was there when I became connected with the New York Central Railroad, and no executive officer in any railroad in the United States who held that position when I was elected and is still active.
It is the habit of age to dwell on the degeneracy of the times and lament the good old days and their superiority, but Yale is infinitely greater and broader than when I graduated sixty-five years ago. The New York Legislature and State executives are governing an empire compared with the problems which we had to solve fifty-nine years ago.
I believe in the necessity of leadership, and while recognizing a higher general average in public life, regret that the world crisis through which we have passed and which is not yet completed, has produced no Washington, Lincoln, or Roosevelt. I rejoice that President Harding, under the pressure of his unequalled responsibilities, is developing the highest qualities of leadership. It is an exquisite delight to visualize each administration from 1856 and to have had considerable intimacy with the leaders in government and the moulders of public opinion during sixty-five unusually laborious years.
Many who have given their reminiscences have kept close continuing diaries. From these voluminous records they have selected according to their judgment. As I have before said, I have no data and must rely on my memory. This faculty is not logical, its operations are not by years or periods, but its films unroll as they are moved by association of ideas and events.
It has been a most pleasurable task to bring back into my life these worthies of the past and to live over again events of greater or lesser importance. Sometimes an anecdote illumines a character more than a biography, and a personal incident helps an understanding of a period more than its formal history.
Life has had for me immeasurable charms. I recognize at all times there has been granted to me the loving care and guidance of God. My sorrows have been alleviated and lost their acuteness from a firm belief in closer reunion in eternity. My misfortunes, disappointments, and losses have been met and overcome by abundant proof of my mother's faith and teaching that they were the discipline of Providence for my own good, and if met in that spirit and with redoubled effort to redeem the apparent tragedy they would prove to be blessings. Such has been the case.
While new friends are not the same as old ones, yet I have found cheer and inspiration in the close communion with the young of succeeding generations. They have made and are making this a mighty good world for me.
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