The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1894-12-26


NEW YORK, Dec. 22.-The eighty
ninth dinner Of the New England society
was held this evening. Covers were laid
for 200. President Elihu Root presided at
the main table At his right sat the Rev
Henry ~ Simpson Of the Broadway taber-
nacle. Amid loud applause Henry Wat
terson arose to respond to the toast, THE
Puritan and the Cavalier" Mr. Waiter
son said:
Eight years ago tonight there stood
where / am standing now young Geor-
gian, who, not without reason, recognized
the Significance Of his presence here
the first southerner to speak at this
board circumstance, let me add, not
very creditable to any Of us-and who,
in words whose eloquence l cannot hope
to recall. appealed from the new South
to New England for a united country. lie
was my disciple, my protege, my friend.
He came u me from the southern schools,
where he had perused the arts Of oratory
and letters, to get 4 few hints in journal
ism, as he said; needing 50 few, indeed,
that a little later sent him to one of the
foremost journalists of this foremost city,
bearing a letter of Introduction, which de-
scribed him as the greatest boy ever born
in Dixie, or anywhere else
He is gone now. But. short as his
life was, its heaven-born mission was full
filled; the dream Of its childhood was rea-
lized for he had been appointed by God
to carry a message Of peace on earth,
good will to men, and this done, he van
as the dove from the ark 1 mean to take
up the word where Grady left 1t off; but
l shall continue the sentence with a some
what larger confidence, and perhaps, with
a somewhat fuller meaning; because. not
withstandng the puritan trappings, ira
dltions and associations which surround me
visible Illustrations of the self-denying
fortituda Of the puritan character and the
somber simplicity of the puritan taste and
habit never felt less out Of place in all
my life.
ITO tell you the truth am afraid that
1 have gained access here on false pre-
lenses; for l am no cavalier at all; just
plain Scotca-Irish; one Of those Scotch
Irish southerners who ate no fire in the
green leaf and has eaten no dirt in the
brown, and who, accepting. for the mo-
ment, the terms puritan and cavalier in
the sense an effete Section3lism once
sought to ascribe to them-descriptive
labels a. once classifying and separating
North and South-verbal redoubts along
that mythical line called Mason and Dixon
over which there were supposed by the
extremists Of other days to be no bridges
Il am much disposed to say, a plague
o both your hOusesp
Each was good enough and bad
enough, in Its way, whilst they lasted :
each in its turn filled the English-speak
ing world with mourning; and each, if
either could have resisted the infection of
the soil and climate they found here,
would be today striving at the swords
point Ia square life by the iron rule Of
theocracy. or to round it by the dizzy
whrl Of a petticoat! 1t is very pretty to
read about the Maypole in Virginia and
very edifying and inspiring to celebrate
the deeds of the pilgrim fathers. But there
is not cavalier blood enough left in the
Old Dominion to produce a single crop of
first families, whilst, out in Nebraska and
Iowa, they claim that they have 50
stripped Neuy England Of her puritan stock
as to spare her hardly enough for farm
hands. This 1 do know, from personal
experience that IL is impossible for the
stranger-guest, sitting beneath a bower of
roses in the Palmetto club at Charleston,
or by mimic log-heap in the Algonquin
club at Boston, to tell the assembled COM
pany apart, particularly after 10 o'clock
in the evening! Why, in that great, final
struggle between the puritans and the
cavalers-which we still hear sometimes
casually Observation-Disclosures It ended
nearly thirty years ago-there had been
such a mixing up of the puritan babies
and cavalier babies during the two or three
generations preceding it--that the surviv-
ing grandmothers of the combatants could
not, except for their uniforms, have picked
out their own on any field of battlel
A Retrospect.
Turning to the Encyclopaedia of Ameri-
can Biography l find that Webster had all
the vices that are supposed 10 have signal
lied the cavalier, and Calhoun all the vr-
tues that are claimed for the puritan. Dur
ing twenty years three statesmen of puri-
tan origin were the chosen party leaders Of
cavalier Mississippi: Robert J. Walker. born
and reared in Pennsylvania; John A. Quit
man, born and reared in New York. and
Sargent S. Prentiss, born and reared in the
good old state OF Maine. That sturdy puri-
tan. John Slidel. never saw Louisiana I'M
til he was old enough to vote and to fight;
native here-an alumnus Of Columbia col,
lege-but sprung from New England ances-
tors. Albert Sidney Johnston, the most
resplendant of modern cavaliers-from trig
to toe a type Of the species-the very rose
and expectancy Of the young confederacy--
did not have drop OF southern blood in his
veins; Yankee on both sides Of the house,
though born in Kentucky a little while
after his father and mother arrived there
from Connecticut. The ambassador, who
serves our government near the French re-
public, was a gallant confederate soldier and
is representative southern statesman; but
he owns the estate in Massachusetts, where
his fathers fathers lived through many gen.
eratiOns.
''And the cavaliers. who missed their stir
rups, somehow, and got into Yankee sad
dies? The woods were full of them. If
Custer was not a cavalier, Rupert was a
puritan. And Sherwood and Wadsworth
and Kearny and Mcpherson and their dash
ing companions and followersl The one
typical puritan soldier Of the war-marl1
you-was a southern. and not northern,
soldier: Stonewall Jackson of the Virginia
line And. il we should care to pursue the
subject further back, what about Ethan
ALLEN and John Stark and Mad Anthony