The first son of a Forefather I ever fell in with was a nine-months Connecticut man at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in the spring of ’62.  Now, I was a guileless and generous lad of nineteen—­all Pennsylvanians are guileless and generous, for our mountains are so rich in coal, our valleys so fat with soil, that our living is easy and therefore our wits are dull, and we are still voting for Jackson. [Great laughter.] The reason the Yankees are smart is because they have to wrest a precarious subsistence from a reluctant soil.  “What shall I do to make my son get forward in the world?” asked an English lord of a bishop.  “I know of only one way,” replied the bishop; “give him poverty and parts.”  Well, that’s the reason the sons of the Pilgrims have all got on in the world.  They all started with poverty, and had to exercise their wits on nutmegs or notions or something to thrive. [Laughter.] Yes, they had “parts.”  Why, they have taken New York from the Dutch; they are half of Wall Street, and only a Jew, or a long-headed Sage, or that surprising and surpassing genius in finance, Jay,[2] can wrestle with them on equal terms.  Ah! these Yankees have “parts”—­lean bodies, sterile soil, but such brains that they grew a Webster. [Applause.] Well, this Connecticut man invited me to his quarters.  When I got back to my regiment I had a shabby overcoat instead of my new one, I had a frying-pan worth twenty cents, that cost me five dollars, and a recipe for baked beans for which I had parted with my gold pen and pencil. [Continued laughter.] I was a sadder and a wiser man that night for that encounter with the Connecticut Pilgrim.

But my allotted time is running away, and, preacher-like, I couldn’t begin without an introduction.  I am afraid in this case the porch will be bigger than the house.  But now to my toast, “The Clergy.”  Surely, Mr. President and gentlemen, you sons of the Pilgrims appreciate the debt you owe the Puritan divines.  What made your section great, dominant, glorious in the history of our common country?  To what class of your citizens—­more than to any other, I think—­do you owe the proud memories of your past, and your strength, achievements, and culture in the present?  Who had the first chance on your destiny, your character, your development?  Why, the Puritan preacher, of course; the man who in every parish inculcated the fear of God in your fathers’ souls, obedience to law, civil and divine, the dignity of man, the worth of the soul and right conduct in life. [Applause.] Believe me, gentlemen, the Puritan clergy did a great work for New England.  Our whole country feels yet the impulse and movement given it by those stern preachers of righteousness, who had Abrahamic eyes under their foreheads and the stuff of Elijah in their souls. [Applause.] I know it’s the fashion now to poke fun at the Puritans, to use the “Blue Laws” as a weapon against them, to sneer at them as hard, narrow, and intolerant.  Yes, alas! we do not breathe through their lungs any more.  The wheel has gone round, and we have come back to the very things the Puritans fled from in hatred and in horror.