[Speech of Woodrow Wilson at the seventeenth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of Brooklyn, December 21, 1896.  Stewart L. Woodford, the President of the Society, said, in introducing the speaker:  “The next toast is entitled ’The Responsibility of having Ancestors,’ and will be responded to by Professor Woodrow Wilson,[13] of Princeton.  I know you will give him such a welcome as will indicate that, while we are mostly Yale men here, we are not jealous of Princeton.”]

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES, AND GENTLEMEN:—­I am not of your blood; I am not a Virginia Cavalier, as Dr. Hill [David J. Hill.  See Vol.  II.] has suggested.  Sometimes I wish I were; I would have more fun.  I come, however, of as good blood as yours; in some respects a better.  Because the Scotch-Irish, though they are just as much in earnest as you are, have a little bit more gayety and more elasticity than you have.  Moreover they are now forming a Scotch-Irish society, which will, as fast as human affairs will allow, do exactly what the New England Societies are doing, viz.:  annex the universe. [Laughter.] We believe with a sincere belief, we believe as sincerely as you do the like, that we really made this country.  Not only that, but we believe that we can now, in some sort of way, demonstrate the manufacture, because the country has obviously departed in many respects from the model which you claim to have set.  Not only that, but it seems to me that you yourselves are becoming a little recreant to the traditions you yearly celebrate.

It seems to me that you are very much in the position, with reference to your forefathers, that the little boy was with reference to his immediate father.  The father was a very busy man; he was away at his work before the children were up in the morning and did not come home till after they had gone to bed at night.  One day this little boy was greatly incensed, as he said, “to be whipped by that gentleman that stays here on Sundays.”  I do not observe that you think about your ancestors the rest of the week; I do not observe that they are very much present in your thoughts at any other time save on Sunday, and that then they are most irritating to you.  I have known a great many men descended from New England ancestors and I do not feel half so hardly toward my ancestors as they do toward theirs.  There is a distant respect about the relationship which is touching.  There is a feeling that these men are well and safely at a distance, and that they would be indulged under no other circumstances whatever; and that the beauty of it is to have descended from them and come so far away.