transmitted. Why, to be celebrating the mere landing of the Pilgrims–
to be trying to make out that this most natural and simple and customary
procedure was an extraordinary circumstance–a circumstance to be amazed
at, and admired, aggrandized and glorified, at orgies like this for two
hundred and sixty years–hang it, a horse would have known enough to
land; a horse– Pardon again; the gentleman on my right assures me that
it was not merely the landing of the Pilgrims that we are celebrating,
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.
Later ancestors of mine were the Quakers William Robinson, Marmaduke
Stevenson, et al. Your tribe chased them put of the country for their
religion’s sake; promised them death if they came back; for your
ancestors had forsaken the homes they loved, and braved the perils of the
sea, the implacable climate, and the savage wilderness, to acquire that
highest and most precious of boons, freedom for every man on this broad
continent to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience–and
they were not going to allow a lot of pestiferous Quakers to interfere
with it. Your ancestors broke forever the chains of political slavery,
and gave the vote to every man in this wide land, excluding none!–none
except those who did not belong to the orthodox church. Your ancestors–