Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 556 pages of information about Modern Eloquence.

Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 556 pages of information about Modern Eloquence.

Well, gentlemen, I said that a public man must take great interest in art, but I feel that the present Government has an apology to make to one department of art, and that is to the sculptors; for there is an old maxim denoting one of the high functions of art which is “Ars est celare artem.”  Now there was a cellar in which the art of the most distinguished sculptors was concealed to the utmost extent of the application of that saying.  We have brought them comparatively into light; and if the sculptors will excuse us for having departed from that sage and ancient maxim, I am sure the public will thank us for having given them an opportunity of seeing those beautiful works of men of which it may be said:  “Vivos ducunt de marmore vultus.”  I trust, therefore, the sculptors will excuse us for having done, not perhaps the best they might have wished, but at least for having relieved them a little from the darkness of that Cimmerian cellar in which their works were hid. [Cheers.] I beg again to thank you, gentlemen, for the honor you have done me in drinking my health. [Loud cheers.]

JOHN R. PAXTON

A SCOTCH-IRISHMAN’S VIEWS OF THE PURITAN

[Speech of Rev. John R. Paxton, D.D., at the seventy-seventh annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1882.  Josiah M. Fiske, the President, occupied the chair.  Dr. Paxton responded for “The Clergy.”]

Mr. President and gentlemen:—­There is no help for it, alas! now.  The Pilgrim or Puritan doth bestride the broad continent like another Colossus and we Dutch, English, Scotch, Scotch-Irish, and Irish walk about under his huge legs [laughter]; “we must bend our bodies when he doth carelessly nod to us.”  For the Puritan is the pious Joseph of the land, and to his sheaf all our sheaves must make obeisance.  As he pipes unto us so we dance.  He takes the chief seat at every national feast and compels us highway-and-hedge people, us unfortunate Dutch and Scotch-Irish, to come in and shout his triumphs and praise at his own self-glorification meetings. [Laughter and applause.] Of course we all know it’s a clear case of the tail wagging the dog.  But it is too late now to go back to the order of nature or the truth of history.  The Puritan, like another Old Man of the Sea, is astride our shoulders and won’t come down, protest, pray, roll, wriggle as Sindbad may.  Why, the Puritan has imposed his Thanksgiving Day and pumpkin-pie upon South Carolina, even. [Applause.] He got mad at the old Whig party, on account of his higher law and abolitionism, and put it to death.  When the Puritan first came to these shores, he made the way to heaven so narrow that only a tight-rope performer could walk it. [Laughter.] Now, what with his Concord philosophies, transcendentalisms, and every heresy, he has made it so wide that you could drive

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Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.