Willis Fletcher Johnson

“ When this structure shall be raised—when its lofty dome shall have rushed upward to the point where that flag now floats—when its crystal surface shall reflect in streams of radiance our warm American sun—when its graceful and majestic interior shall be filled with the choicest products of both worlds—our minds will soar upward beyond and above all the material considerations to which I have alluded, and will recognize our own nothingness, and the infinite superiority of the Power by whose favor we are permitted to do what little we effect. ”

“ Two large stones are brought and laid one upon the other before Powhatan; behold savage hands seize upon the unhappy Smith and lay his head upon the stones; the war-clubs are poised in air, the chief’s hand starts to give the fatal sign; at the foot of the throne, one gentle heart is throbbing wildly with mingled love and fear; poor little Pocahontas, while the stones were being brought, put in her plea for mercy, but it was not even noticed; she is the dearest thing in the world to that stern old chief, but even she has never yet dared dispute his authority. ”

“ Have I heard the arguments in favor of prohibition? Well, can anyone help having heard them? No project ever placed before the public has been more earnestly and persistently advocated. But where is the sense of demanding a law against which you know the majority of the people will be arrayed? Suppose during momentary enthusiasm a State carries a prohibition law by a small majority, some drinking men themselves being constrained by their neighbors to vote for the law and against their own inclinations, how is the law to be maintained? By public opinion. Who creates public opinion? ”

“ In an age which is impatient of any voice that will not cry, ‘Great is the god of railroads and syndicates, and greater yet are the apostles of ‘puts’ and ‘calls,’ of ‘corners’ and pools!’ we want a race of men who by their very existence shall be a standing protest against the reign of a coarse materialism and a deluge of greed and self-seeking.
“But to have such a race of men we must have among us those whose vision has been purged and unsealed to see the dignity of the scholar’s calling. ”

“ And now let us see after the uses which have been made of the system, and after the unparalleled prosperity which has come to us as a nation under its influence, if the parent of all this prosperity, to a greater or less degree, is to breathe its last—if its strong arm is to be stilled, and if we are to look for something better. Shall we wonder that men are bewildered when we look into the future and ask what is to supply the vacuum caused by the decay of the National Banking system? ”

“ Here is a man whose days and nights are spent in laborious plodding, and whose brain, before he is done with life, becomes a store-house from which you can draw out a fact as you would take down a book from the shelves of a library. We must not speak of such a scholar disrespectfully; and in a generation which is impatient of plodding industry, and content, as never before, with smart and superficial learning, we may well honor those whose rare acquisitions are the fruit of painful and untiring labor. ”

“ Let him cultivate independence to the point of sacrifice, and learn that humble things with unbartered liberty are better than splendors bought with its price. Let him neither surrender his individuality to government nor merge it with the mob. Let him stand upright and fearless—a freeman born of freemen—sturdy in his own strength—dowering his family in the sweat of his brow—loving to his State—loyal to his Republic—earnest in his allegiance wherever it rests, but building his altar in the midst of{611} his household gods and shrining in his own heart the uttermost temple of its liberty. ”

“ Once bring a young man clearly to feel that his career in life is fairly begun when he resorts to college or the professional school; let him but conceive that his place in life is to be determined by his conduct in preparation for it, and we bring to bear a set of motives which are morally as high as the ordinary motives of discipline are low in the moral scale. Just so far as the work of a student abounds in suggestions of his work in the world, so far as his teachers by their conduct, as well as by their words, serve to arouse his manly, dutiful sense, the education effects its true end. ”

“ Any of these men considered himself equal to taking a hand at building houses, clearing land, shoeing horses, digging post-holes, following the plough, planting corn, tending stock, loading steamboats, acting as deck-hand of a flatboat, carrying mails, or doing whatever else had to be done. They blundered terribly at times, but who did not and who does not? Each new kind of work they laid their hands to sharpened their wits and widened their view of what might be done in the way of getting ahead in the world. That is the reason why trade unions do not flourish in new countries. ”

“ The life of the defendant in a divorce suit, unless the complaint is utterly groundless and unfair, is from the first likely to be blasted. The more at fault the more the defendant must suffer, not only in his own self-respect, but in the regard of those about him. The curious gaze of the spectators, the intent look of the jurors, the disgust of the judge upon the bench, the flippancy of the witness on the stand, all have influences which would make many innocent people show signs of guilt. ”

“ But to the poor man dependent upon daily wages, and with no property or savings to fall back upon, a family is often fetters, with ball and chain to boot. Thank God, such bonds often feel as light as feathers and soft as silk, but these sensations do not decrease the weight or dragging power one particle. If a man determines to marry while he has nothing to marry on, let him at least be honest with himself, tell himself that he is going to be the slave of whoever employs him, and blame himself instead of employers, or capital, or public opinion for the consequences. ”

“ We do not have to squander the energies and sometimes the life-blood of our race by putting all our young men into armies and navies and teaching them distrust, suspicion, cruelty and the spirit of rapine. Our taxes are heavy, but, on the other hand, our national debt, once so enormous, is being reduced with such rapidity that soon we will show the world the astonishing spectacle of a great nation without a debt. ”

“ It fires every passion, makes every base appetite the master of mind and will, leaves man an utter wreck. Of its work there are frightful statistics of robberies, arsons, murders, insanities, and curses to the third and fourth generations; but there are no statistics that can measure the heartbreaks of wives, hungers of children, disappointments of fond parents, and physical inheritance of deterioration and unconquerable appetite. It is the one great, stark, crying curse of our race and age. It is the personal foe of every parent, Sunday-school teacher, and preacher of righteousness. ”

“ All the other nations envy us—envy us our form of government, our freedom from conscription, large armies, privileged classes, vested rights, ugly neighbors, churchly impositions and hopeless debts. But we can maintain all these features of superiority only by maintaining an honest and intelligent government. We cannot do it by being blind, unreasoning partizans of any political organization. To be a “strong Democrat” or “strong Republican” is often to be contemptibly weak as an American. Loyalty to party often means disloyalty to the nation. ”

“ We shall claim the honor for the country and for the people; for that mixture of individual energy and practical accommodation which gives such wonderful efficiency to the American character; for that public spirit and private good feeling of which we have such striking evidence here to-day—bringing together at this moment, men of all parties, to work together for a common object of general interest. ”

“ Nothing, perhaps, is so typical of the ingenuity, skill and colossal power of our modern civilization as the railroad train—a solitary man holding the lever which controls this tremendous mass of wood and metal, with its freight of goods and passengers rushing past us at the rate of a mile a minute. ”

“ Half-educated men, men of almost no education, have brought this country to great peril again and again. Their numbers are constantly increasing. We must be on guard against them. Misdirected activity is worse than no activity at all, but there is something worse than that, and it is the ceaseless ambition of men whose conscience does not keep pace with their intelligence. The school supplies intelligence, but conscience is something which cannot be made to order, and no institution under charge and supervision of a government can be expected to supply it. ”

“ If workingmen were divine, all their past efforts would have done a great deal of good, but they are only human, and there is no getting away from the fact that when any lot of men first are brought together through sense of wrong, their first thought is revenge, which never meets the public’s views. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” is an expression from authority so high that we are obliged to treat it with respect, and it is certain that during the present generation a desire for vengeance by any one or for any reason whatever has never called forth the sympathy of the public. ”

“ And to these has come, in all ages, that which is the best reward of the scholar—not a fact to be hung up on a peg and duly numbered and catalogued, but the vision of a truth to be the inspiration of all their lives.”
Among the departments of higher education at which the self-styled “practical” man turns up his nose are the mental, moral and political sciences. They are sneered at as a mass of mere theories; good enough, perhaps, to help intellectual natures otherwise unoccupied to pass away the time, but of no practical good in the world. ”

“ Yet, in the face of this terrible obstacle, under all the evils of the insular monopoly of Great Britain, seeking to aggrandize her own manufacturing industry at the expense of the industry of the rest of mankind, the genius of practical art has triumphed, and will triumph still more over every difficulty. It is raising the laborer to his true position; it is facilitating the association of men; it is harmonizing their interests; and, whether legislation helps it or not, it will ultimately redeem our race from dependence and slavery. ”

“ The mechanic’s son, and the farmer’s son, and the day laborer’s son gets as good a common-school education as the children of the richest men in the town, and has equal opportunities for going into mercantile business, or for entering the offices of business houses and corporations, and his own father will tell him that he is a fool unless he embraces these opportunities. No man gets rich by farming alone, or by laboring at day’s wages at any mechanical occupation, whereas some men in trade and speculation amass great fortunes. ”