Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures | Page 2

for his having exposed me
to the flying bullets of the Confederate pickets, a peril he was not
responsible for and of which he knew nothing until I informed him in
after years.

A few years after the war our barks met upon the same wave of life's
ocean. We became engaged in the same work of reform, I as an
advocate of temperance, he as candidate for the presidency of the
United States on the prohibition ticket. From the warmth of friendship,
my prejudice melted like mist before the morning sun and I found in
General Green Clay Smith a combination of the noblest traits in human
character.
Whoever would graduate in the highest franchise of being, and realize
the royalty that comes of partnership with sovereignty, must have
respectfulness of bearing and feeling toward those from whom they
differ. We are greatly creatures of education and environment anyway,
and until we can unlock the alphabet of a life and sum up the mingling,
blending, reciprocal forces that have been playing upon that life, we
have no more right to abuse persons for honest convictions than we
have to blame them for their parentage.
You do not know the forces that have given direction to the lives of
others; if so, you might know why one is a member of this or that
church, this or that political party, why one lives north, another south,
one on the land, another on the sea.
Some of you may differ with me, but I believe if General Grant had
been born in the South, reared and educated in the South, his father had
owned a cotton plantation and many slaves, General Grant would have
been a Confederate General in the Civil War; while Robert E. Lee if
born, reared and educated in New England would have been a Union
General. If my opinion is correct, if all you northern people had lived
down south, and we southern people had lived north, we would have
gotten the better of the conflict instead of you.
If yonder oak, that came from the finest acorn and promised to be the
monarch of the forest, was dwarfed by simply a drop of dew; if yonder
rolling river, bearing its commerce to sea, was turned seaward, instead
of lakeward, by simply a pebble thrown in the fountain-head; why not
have consideration for those whose circumstances and early training set
in motion convictions differing from ours. God did not intend all the
trees to be oaks, or that all the rivers should run in one direction, but He

did intend all to make up at last His one great purpose.
Thomas F. Marshall in an address many years ago, to illustrate the
differences between people of different sections, said: "If you call a
Mississippian a liar, he will challenge you to a duel; call a Kentuckian a
liar, he will stab you with a bowie-knife or shoot you down; call an
Indianian a liar, he will say, 'You're another;' call a New Englander a
liar, he will say, 'I bet you a dollar you can't prove it.'"
Mr. Marshall intended his compliment for the Mississippian and
Kentuckian, but really his compliment was to the New Englander. If a
man calls you a liar, and you are not a liar, the manliest thing to do is to
say, "I challenge you, sir, not on to a field of dishonor, where the better
aimed bullet will tell who's a murderer, but I challenge you out into the
sunlight of God's truth where I'll prove myself a man and you a
slanderer."
I use this to show it is not just to look at character or questions from the
narrow standpoint of prejudice.
Then again, we should not judge a person by one trait. There are
persons for whom you may do fifty favors, yet make one mistake and
they will never forgive you. George Dewey went to the Philippine
Islands, remained in the harbor for months, never made a mistake and
returned to this country the naval hero of the world; and never were so
many babies, horses and dogs named for one man in the same length of
time. But one morning the papers came out with the statement that he
had deeded to his wife a piece of property some friends had presented
to him, and within three days after, when his picture was thrown on a
canvas in an opera house in Washington City it was hissed from the
audience, and when later on he dared to allow his name used as a
candidate for the presidency of the United States, we were ready to
smash the hero at once. But we must remember there are very few men
able to withstand the world's praises. Indeed there never