to the toast:  ’The Dutch as Enemies.—­Did a person but know the value of an enemy he would purchase him with fine gold.’”]

MR. PRESIDENT:—­Ladies—­to whom now, as always, I look up for inspiration—­and gentlemen of the Holland Society, when one has been rocked in a Dutch cradle, and baptized with a Dutch name and caressed with a Dutch slipper, and nursed on Dutch history, and fed on Dutch theology, he is open to accept an invitation from the Holland Society.  It is now four years since I had the pleasure of speaking my mind freely about the Dutch, and in the meantime so much mind—­or is it only speech—­has accumulated that the present opportunity comes very much like a merciful interposition of Providence on my behalf.  During these years my residence has been changed, for whereas I used to live in Albany now I live in Schenectady, which is like moving from The Hague to Leyden, or in other words, going a little farther into the heart of Dutchdom, for nowhere else is Dutch spelled with a larger D than in the city of my residence to-day, with Lisha’s Kill on one side, and Rotterdam on another, and Amsterdam on the third, and a real dyke on the fourth, to say nothing of the canal.

You do not remember that speech of mine four years ago for you did not hear it.  That was not my fault, however, but your misfortune, of course.  You did not hear it because you were not here.  You were asleep in your own beds, of course, where Dutchmen always go when they are sleepy, which is perhaps the principal reason why they are not caught napping in business hours.  Unfortunately, however, that speech was printed in full, or I might repeat it now.  One learns from such little experiences what not to do the next time.  But if you do not remember the speech, I do—­at least the subject—­which was “The Dutch as Neighbors,” and it has seemed wise to get as far as possible from that subject to-night lest I might be tempted to plagiarize, and so I propose to talk for a moment only about “The Dutch as Enemies.”

I do not like the first suggestion of this subject any more than do you.  For to think of a man as an enemy is to think ill of him, and to intimate that the Dutchman was not and is not perfect is to intimate something which no one here will believe, and which no one certainly came to hear.  But as a matter of fact, gentlemen, no one can be perfect without being an enemy any more than he can be perfect without being a friend.  The two things are complementary; the one is the reverse side of the other.  Everything in this universe, except a shadow, has two sides—­unless, perhaps, it may be a political machine whose one-sidedness is so proverbial as to suggest that it also is a thing wholly of darkness caused by someone standing in the way of the light.  The Dutchman, however, is not a shadow of anything or of anybody.  You can walk around him, and when you do that you find that he has not only a kindly face and a warm hand, but something called backbone, and it is that of which I am to speak to-night, for it suggests about all that I mean by the Dutchman as an enemy.