of the people to create their own royalty, and then
to put it aside when they have done with it.
It was difficult to see how greater honors could have
been paid to any man than were given to the President
when he embarked at Elizabethport and advanced, through
a harbor crowded with decorated vessels, to the great
city, the wharves and roofs of which were black with
human beings —a holiday city which shook
with the tumult of the popular welcome. Wherever
he went he drew the swarms in the streets as the moon
draws the tide. Republican simplicity need not
fear comparison with any royal pageant when the President
was received at the Metropolitan, and, in a scene
of beauty and opulence that might be the flowering
of a thousand years instead of a century, stood upon
the steps of the “dais” to greet the devoted
Centennial Quadrille, which passed before him with
the courageous five, ‘Imperator, morituri te
salutamus’. We had done it—we,
the people; that was our royalty. Nobody had imposed
it on us. It was not even selected out of four
hundred. We had taken one of the common people
and set him up there, creating for the moment also
a sort of royal family and a court for a background,
in a splendor just as imposing for the passing hour
as an imperial spectacle. We like to show that
we can do it, and we like to show also that we can
undo it. For at the banquet, where the Elected
ate his dinner, not only in the presence of, but with,
representatives of all the people of all the States,
looked down on by the acknowledged higher power in
American life, there sat also with him two men who
had lately been in his great position, the centre only
a little while ago, as he was at the moment, of every
eye in the republic, now only common citizens without
a title, without any insignia of rank, able to transmit
to posterity no family privilege. If our hearts
swelled with pride that we could create something
just as good as royalty, that the republic had as
many men of distinguished appearance, as much beauty,
and as much brilliance of display as any traditional
government, we also felicitated ourselves that we
could sweep it all away by a vote and reproduce it
with new actors next day.
It must be confessed that it was a people’s affair. If at any time there was any idea that it could be controlled only by those who represented names honored for a hundred years, or conspicuous by any social privilege, the idea was swamped in popular feeling. The names that had been elected a hundred years ago did not stay elected unless the present owners were able to distinguish themselves. There is nothing so to be coveted in a country as the perpetuity of honorable names, and the “centennial” showed that we are rich in those that have been honorably borne, but it also showed that the century has gathered no privilege that can count upon permanence.