but the Pilgrims themselves.  So we have struck an inconsistency here —­one says it was the landing, the other says it was the Pilgrims.  It is an inconsistency characteristic of your intractable and disputatious tribe, for you never agree about anything but Boston.  Well, then, what do you want to celebrate those Pilgrims for?  They were a mighty hard lot—­you know it.  I grant you, without the slightest unwillingness, that they were a deal more gentle and merciful and just than were the people of Europe of that day; I grant you that they are better than their predecessors.  But what of that?—­that is nothing.  People always progress.  You are better than your fathers and grandfathers were (this is the first time I have ever aimed a measureless slander at the departed, for I consider such things improper).  Yes, those among you who have not been in the penitentiary, if such there be, are better than your fathers and grandfathers were; but is that any sufficient reason, for getting up annual dinners and celebrating you?  No, by no means—­by no means.  Well, I repeat, those Pilgrims were a hard lot.  They took good care of themselves, but they abolished everybody else’s ancestors.  I am a border-ruffian from the State of Missouri.  I am a Connecticut Yankee by adoption.  In me, you have Missouri morals, Connecticut culture; this, gentlemen, is the combination which makes the perfect man.  But where are my ancestors?  Whom shall I celebrate?  Where shall I find the raw material?

My first American ancestor, gentlemen, was an Indian—­an early Indian.  Your ancestors skinned him alive, and I am an orphan.  Not one drop of my blood flows in that Indian’s veins today.  I stand here, lone and forlorn, without an ancestor.  They skinned him!  I do not object to that, if they needed his fur; but alive, gentlemen-alive!  They skinned him alive—­and before company!  That is what rankles.  Think how he must have felt; for he was a sensitive person and easily embarrassed.  If he had been a bird, it would have been all right, and no violence done to his feelings, because he would have been considered “dressed.”  But he was not a bird, gentlemen, he was a man, and probably one of the most undressed men that ever was.  I ask you to put yourselves in his place.  I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New England Society ought to present.  Cease to come to these annual orgies in this hollow modern mockery—­the surplusage of raiment.  Come in character; come in the summer grace, come in the unadorned simplicity, come in the free and joyous costume which your sainted ancestors provided for mine.