all Barnum’s elephants abreast upon it and through the strait gate.  He compels us to send our sons to his colleges for his nasal note.  He is communicating his dyspepsia to the whole country by means of codfish-balls and baked beans.  He has encouraged the revolt of women, does our thinking, writes our books, insists on his standard of culture, defines our God, and, as the crowning glory of his audacity, has imposed his own sectional, fit, and distinguishing name upon us all, and swells with gratified pride to hear all the nations of the earth speak of all Americans as Yankees. [Laughter and applause.]

I would enter a protest, but what use?  We simply grace his triumph, and no images may be hung at this feast but the trophies of the Puritan.  For all that, I mean to say a brief word for my Scotch-Irish race in America.  Mr. President, General Horace Porter, on my left, and I, did not come over in the Half Moon or the Mayflower.  We stayed on in County Donegal, Ireland, in the loins of our forefathers, content with poteen and potatoes, stayed on until the Pilgrims had put down the Indians, the Baptists, and the witches; until the Dutch had got all the furs this side Lake Erie. [Laughter and applause.] By the way, what hands and feet those early Knickerbockers had!  In trading with the Indians it was fixed that a Dutchman’s hand weighed one pound and his foot two pounds in the scales.  But what puzzled the Indian was that no matter how big his pack of furs, the Dutchman’s foot was its exact weight at the opposite end of the scale.  Enormous feet the first Van—­or De—­or Stuy—­had. [Continued laughter.]

But in course of time, after the Pilgrims had come for freedom, the Dutch for furs, Penn for a frock—­a Quaker cut and color—­we came, we Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, for what?  Perhaps the king oppressed the presbytery, or potatoes failed, or the tax on whiskey was doubled.  Anyway we came to stay:  some of us in New England, some in the valleys of Virginia, some in the mountains of North Carolina, others in New York; but the greater part pushed out into Pennsylvania—­as far away as they could get from the Puritans and the Dutch—­settled the great Cumberland Valley; then, crossing the Alleghany Mountains, staked out their farms on the banks of the Monongahela River, set up their stills, built their meeting-houses, organized the presbytery—­and, gentlemen, the reputation of our Monongahela rye is unsurpassed to this day [long applause], and our unqualified orthodoxy even now turns the stomach of a modern Puritan and constrains Colonel Ingersoll[1] not to pray, alas! but to swear. [Loud laughter.]

Mr. President, I hope General Porter will join me in claiming some recognition for the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from these sons of the Puritans.  For do you not know that your own man Bancroft says that the first public voice in America for dissolving all connection with Great Britain came not from the Puritans of New England, the Dutch of New York, nor the planters of Virginia, but from the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians? [Applause.] Therefore, Mr. President, be kind enough to accept from us the greeting of the Scotch-Irish of Pennsylvania, our native State—­that prolific mother of pig-iron and coal, whose favorite and greatest sons are still Albert Gallatin, of Switzerland, and Benjamin Franklin, of Massachusetts. [Laughter and applause.]