The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1880-02-06
TIE TYPICAL YANKEE

New England annual festival at Ann
Arbor, not long since. in the following
graphic and facetious manner:
Mr.. Pr sident, Ladies and Gentlemen:
This IL the Athens of The West, this town OF
Ann Arbor, and have been astonished that we
have only heard one Greek story here tonight.
| shall Lave to give you another one 1 do not
know that II Is IN the books il may be from an
unpublished manuscript
Zeus once upon time invited all the good
little boys and girls among the immortals TO an
afternoon party on Mount Olympus. Archery
was as popular then as now, / imagine, for
among the guests came number OF clubs, the
Toxopholite aud others, ana late in the after
noon they took their places on the lawn and
began TO shoot for the lager of the immortals,
which we have been taught to call nectar
Their target, believe, was the sun; and after
shooting Tor u time with various success aud
rather unsatisfactory result, they got into a
dispute. In body they rushed up to the old
mans house where he had retired 10 settle
some OF the broils for which his family was so
notorious Pointing to the disk just reaching
the horizon, they asked him TO try his luck.
The old man pushed back his spectacles and,
holding the bow and arrows which had been
forced into his hand, heard the clamorous re-
quest, aud, apparently to get rid OF the din,
stepped out on the porch gave one look ut the
orb, and then, with one stride into the West,
passed over the space which the children had
been ia vain trying to span with their arrows
l think Zeus must have been the first Yankee.
He did what others had tried to do, and he
went West. 'nN
The next approximate Yankee of any promi-
nence that have met WI Ii in my limited read
ing was Abraham, who lii early life left the
land of Ur and went west. / think he went
down into Egyp', and atterward came back
and lowered around Damascus. l should
judge, from the pictures, he had an eye to their
manufactures. At any rate, he finally settled
down, and managed To pick up some OF the
pasture lands in Mesopotamia. He was cat
tle-raiser. He died very much respected
And right here have been thinking how
could get in that part of the toast which refers
to tho Yankee as the man who bends but never
breaks, and have concluded that this applied
to Abraham, for although he bent undsr the
weight Of l75 years, he never broke. At least
he never made an assignment There is no
telling what the old man would have done if
our late Bankrupt law had prevailed in Asia
Minor.
/ shall not reckon Xerxes among the typical
Yankees, for these reasons: First, because he
let those two little accidents at ThermopylR
and Marathon turn him back from his intend
Cd western trip: second, because he had an
ivory throne to sit upon, which must have
taken the tusks of more elephants than Capt
Cumming ever killed, and which, if they had
been put into cane-heads, knife-handles and
WOulu nave SOU lOf enough 10
have enabled him 10 get up a corner on corn in
Byzantium This should forever exclude
NerXes from place in the tribe
Then there was julius Cesar. i think he
was cut out for Yankee, but the times were
against him. He always did very well as long
as he faced to the west and kept at work but
when he went back to Rome and retired from
business he died suddenly. His fate has evi-
IDENTITY been lesson to modern Yankees, who
never retire till the curtain drops. He had a
way OF bending most things to his will, and he
never broke, although, think, if he had lived
d little longer, Judging from his last will and
testament, he would have broken: he at least
had very nebulous idea Of his cash account;
for you remember he left millions to the Ro-
man people; but when they began to examine
his pockets, strong box and bank account they
couldn't find denarius. You know the Astors
and yanderbilts and Rhinelanders of Rome had
to chip in to enable Augustus to continue III the
business
Coming down little later, there was Christie
pher Columbus, who had good deal of the
Yankee i'll him; but the latter part Of his life
wasn't as pleasant AS that of most Yankees
from the fact that he went back East. If he
had stayed in this part of the world, taken a
post. tradership in Hispaniola, gone to trading
with the Indians, and picked up all the land he
could got hold of, he would have passed for a
very good specimen.
Imerely give those instances because in our
ford to be generous, and to concede that these
men, ander proper auspices and with the right
kind of ancestry, might have done something
which would have entitled them to humble
places in the Yankee Valhalla
Time will not permit, nor does my theme de-
maud, that should follow the composite gen
ealogy of the Yankee up 20 its parent stocks,
that should start from the shores of the North
sea with those tiilers OF the soil, fishermen and
fighters, those men i'll whom We behold the
germ of the Yankee of to-day, Those men
who glored in personal courage in loyalty to
plghted word, who were inspired by o nigh
ana stern sense of manhood and the worth of
man" The word Yankee has now a wider,
broader significance than any definition of
strains of blood 1t took more than New En-
gland to fashion the typical Yankee-the man
who bends but never breaks. Thrown upon a
shore he did not seek. like Darwin's fish, he
developed qualities suited TO his needs. In
that rigorous climate and on that sterile soil.
flexibility and courage were essential to his
we'll being, and toughness of fiber followed.
In the fullness Of time the continent was to be
consecrated to liberty; and then, unconscious
agent of the future he was he unwittingly
formed the advance guard for civilization and
freedom. How for long years he fought with
the ballot and then with the bullet, need not
speak; but his hexibility, his tenacity, his
many -sidedDess, his powers OF adaptation, can
not be galnsayed.
i IL
"a the arrow was drawn from his bleeding side,
| in the syrian desert: The Nazarene has cou-
| quered." SO we may say, III limited sense
"The Yankee has conquered;" and, as the mau
OF Nazareth conquered in part by his ethics
! and his philosophy, so likewise has the Yankee
conquered Wherever in this broad land the
school-house and the church stand side by
side, there has the Yankee conquered. Wher-
ever community il rermeatod with the senti-
ment of equal and exact justice to ail cen,
there has the Yankee conquered Wherever
industry is enDobled and idieness il disreputa-
bic. there has the Yankee conquered. Wher-
ever intelligent labor prevails over SENT bar
barrie caste, there has the Yankee conquered.
Wherever we are regarded iudissolubly as one
people, that we are nation instead of a con-
| federatiop, that the word Nation should Ia
spelled with big en-" there has the Yankee
conquered. But in the conquest the con-
queior has been merged in the conquered: the
leavcn has become part OF the loaf; and now
thank Heaven, New England is not the only
hive from which Yankees swarm.
To be an American now, IN the highest sense
of the word, is to be a Yankee, whether the
strain of blood DO Caucasian, African, Mongol
ian or American. The typical Yankee, the mar
who bends but never breaks, is the American
par excellence. He IL the apostle of results
He never mistakes activity for usefulness. IA,
has been called n trader, but he Is never
jockey. If he has neither goods nor chattell
lac will trade ideas with you. They say thu