I heard, years ago, the difference illustrated between the Yankee and the Dutchman.  There was an explosion on a Mississippi River steamboat; the boiler burst, and the passengers were thrown into the air.  After the accident, the captain came around to inquire in regard to them, and he found the Dutchman, but not the Yankee; and he said to the Dutchman, “Did you see anything of that Yankee?” The Dutchman replied, “Oh, yes; when I vas going up, he vas coming down.”  Now, the Dutch blood may not be quite so quick as the Yankee, but it is more apt to be sure it is right before it goes ahead.  Dutch blood means patience, fidelity, and perseverance.  It means faith in God also.  Yes, it means generosity.  I hardly ever knew a mean Dutchman.  That man who fell down dead in my native village couldn’t have had any Dutch blood in him.  He was over eighty years of age, and had never given a cent to any benevolent object during his life; but in a moment of weakness, when he saw a face of distress, he gave a cent to an unfortunate man, and immediately dropped dead; and the surgeon declared, after the post-mortem examination, that he died of sudden enlargement of the heart.  Neither is there any such mean man among the Dutch as that man who was so economical in regard to meat that he cut off a dog’s tail and roasted it and ate the meat, and then gave the bone back to the dog.  Or that other mean man I heard of, who was so economical that he used a wart on the back of his neck for a collar-button.  I have so much faith in Holland blood, that I declare the more Hollanders come to this country the better we ought to like it.  Wherever they try to land, let them land on our American soil; for all this continent is going to be after a while under one government.  I suppose you have noticed how the governments on the southern part of the continent are gradually melting into our own; and soon the difficulty on the north between Canada and the United States will be amicably settled and the time will come when the United States Government will offer hand and heart in marriage to beautiful and hospitable Canada; and when the United States shall so offer its hand in marriage, Canada will blush and look down, and, thinking of her allegiance across the sea, will say, “Ask mother.”

In a suggestive letter which the chairman of the committee wrote me, inviting me to take part in this entertainment, he very beautifully and potently said that the Republic of the Netherlands had given hospitality in the days that are past to English Puritans and French Huguenots and Polish refugees and Portuguese Jews, and prospered; and I thought, as I read that letter, “Why, then, if the Republic of the Netherlands was so hospitable to other nations, surely we ought to be hospitable to all nations, especially to Hollanders.”  Oh, this absurd talk about “America for Americans!” Why, there isn’t a man here to-night that is not descended from some foreigner, unless he is an Indian.  Why, the native Americans were Modocs,