In the leaden tempest which rained around Drury’s Bluff, a boyish officer led a column of riflemen, gallant and daring.  His uniform was soiled with the grim dirt of many a battle, but his bright blue eye took in every feature of the conflict.  The day was just closing when an angry bullet pierced his throat as he was cheering on his men, and the young life of my college friend, Abram Zabriskie, of Jersey City, as chivalric a Dutch colonel as ever drew a blade in battle, was breathed out in the mighty throes of civil war. [Applause.]

As we picture to ourselves the appearance of that grand figure of William of Orange, as he led his heroic people through and out of scenes of darkness and hunger and death into the sweet light of freedom; as we turn the pages of history that recount the deeds of glory of Vander Werf, the burgomaster of Leyden; of Count Egmont and Count Horn, of de Ruyter and Van Tromp, let us not forget that the same sturdy stock has developed in the New World the same zeal for human rights, the same high resolves of duty, the same devotion to liberty.  If ever again this nation needs brave defenders, your sons and mine will, I trust, be able to show to the world that the patriotism of Dutchmen, that true Dutch valor, still fills the breasts of the soldiers of America! [Prolonged cheering.]

SIR ARTHUR SULLIVAN

MUSIC

[Speech of Sir Arthur Sullivan at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, May 2, 1891.  Sir Frederic Leighton, President of the Academy, occupied the chair.  “In response for Music,” said the President, “I shall call on a man whose brilliant and many-sided gifts are not honored in his own country alone, and who has gathered laurels with full hands in every field of musical achievement—­my old friend, Sir Arthur Sullivan.”]

YOUR ROYAL HIGHNESS, MY LORDS AND GENTLEMEN:  It is gratifying to find that at the great representative art-gathering of the year the sister arts are now receiving at the hands of the painters and sculptors of the United Kingdom that compliment to which their members are justly entitled.  Art is a commonwealth in which all the component estates hold an equal position, and it has been reserved for you, sir, under your distinguished presidency, to give full and honorable recognition to this important fact.  You have done so in those terms of delicate, subtle compliment, which whilst displaying the touch of the master, also bear the impress of genuine sympathy, by calling upon my friend Mr. Irving, and myself, as representatives of the drama and of music, to return thanks for those branches of art to which our lives’ efforts have been devoted.