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Col. George Washington BAIN was educated in the
public schools of Bourbon County, Kentucky, attending school
there from 1848 to 1858. His various experiences
were those of a farmer and in connection with a dry
goods house at Lexington. He early became interested
in the temperance cause as represented by the organization of Good Templars, and from 1870 to 1875
served as grand counselor of the Good Templars of
Kentucky, and from 1875 to 1880 as grand chief templar. He was also editor of the Good Templar
Advocate, and as an organizer he went all over the State
of Kentucky and instituted lodges of Good Templars
and personally gave the pledge to over 40,000 people
in his home state. He was a powerful force in giving
solidity to the local option law, and caused that law
to be invoked in a great many Kentucky towns. Forty
or fifty years ago, when his work of this nature was at
its height, his was a dangerous mission. Again and again
his life was threatened, especially in the mountainous
district of Eastern Kentucky, and it required all the
courage of the militant Christian to carry out the mission Colonel BAIN set himself to perform. Beginning
in 1880, his services were more and more required for
the popular lecture platform, and for a number of
years a Lyceum or Chautauqua course was hardly considered complete without George W. BAIN being
included as a speaker. For twenty-two successive years
he lectured in Canada, and he delivered thirty-six lectures on the Ocean Grove platform at Ocean Grove,
New Jersey.
Col. BAIN has been a devoted member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, since he was fifteen years of age. Politically he has supported parties and candidates that promise the greatest good and efficiency in government.
On August 30, 1860, Colonel BAIN married Anna M. JOHNSON, of Bourbon County. They were happily married more than half a century. She died January 9, 1917. Her father, Jackson JOHNSON, was a farmer and trader in Bourbon County and widely known as a citizen in that section of the state. Mrs. BAIN was the fourth in a family of seven children. Five children were born to Colonel and Mrs. BAIN: George A., now vice-president of the Union Bank and Trust Company of Lexington; John, who is an auctioneer by profession; Edward, who died in infancy; Laura, wife of Dr. H. C. MORRISON, president of Asbury College in Kentucky; and Anna, wife of Calvin T. ROSZELL.
Col. BAIN offered wit, humor and reason into his eight popular lectures: "Among The Masses, or Traits of Character", "A Searchlight of the Twentieth Century", "Our Country, Our Homes and Our Duty". "The New Woman and The Old Man", "The Safe Side of Life for Young Men", "Platform Experiences", "The Defeat of The Nation's Dragon" and "If I Could Live Life Over." As a public speaker Col. BAIN admited that how to get a grip on his hearers outweighed the grammar of language; that the ring of sincerity and truth in presenting a proposition appealed to him more than relation of pronoun or preposition; besides in the "high school of hard knocks" from which he graduated artistic taste in literature was not taught.
Col. BAIN presented his lecture "If I Could Live Life Over" at the 1917 Tingley Chautauqua. For those who would like to 'relive' this event, following is the text from that lecture.
Now and then I hear an old man or an old woman say, "Even if I could I would not live life over." Well, I own I would, provided I could begin the journey with the knowledge I now have of what it means to live.
While mistakes have been many there are some things I would not change. I would be brought up in the country as I was. I would play over the same blue-grass carpet, along the same turnpike aisle, swing on the branches of the same old trees and listen to the concert chorus of the same song birds.
Indeed I sympathize with the boy who exchanges the music of birds, melody of streams, lowing of herds, driving of teams, diamond dew on bending blade, morning sun and evening shade, with all other sweet associations of country life for a lodging room in a city, where church doors and home doors are closed against him in the evening hours of the week, and all evil places wide open for his ruin. It has been well said: "The street fair of evil associations in our large cities begins with the night shadows and grows with the darkness." I dare say if I could draw aside the veil that will shut in the night scenes of this city, the revelation would make some godly fathers tremble for their boys, and pious mothers long to gather their children about them when the sun goes down, as moor birds gather their helpless young when hawks are screaming in the sky.
All hail to the Young Men's Christian Association, with its open doors for young men in the evening hours! All hail to its gymnasium, its swimming pool, basketball and other sports that develop strength and furnish entertainment! Away with the idea that all the pleasures of the world belong to the devil.
A distinguished divine was brought up in New England by a staid old aunt, who never let him go anywhere except to church, Sunday school and prayer meeting. When quite a lad she let him go to New York City to visit a cousin. That cousin took him to see Barnum's circus. It was his first circus, and the wild animals, the bareback riding, trapeze performance, clowns and chariot races bewildered the country boy. Next morning he wrote his aunt, saying: "Dear Aunt, if you'll go to one circus you'll never go to another prayer meeting as long as you live." But he did go to prayer meeting and became a grand good man. There are many innocent springs of pleasure, where youth can drink and not be harmed.
It may surprise some for me to say, if I could live life over I would be brought up in the same old state of Kentucky. "With all her faults I love her still," but not her stills . It has been my privilege to visit every state in the union and I find all the good is not in any one state, nor all the bad. While Kentucky has had her night riders, Missouri has had her boodlers, California her grafters, Illinois her anarchists, Pennsylvania her machine politics, New York her Tammany tiger, and Washington City her blizzards on inauguration days. God doesn't grow all the daisies in one field nor confine thorns to one thicket.
Not only would I be brought up in Kentucky and in the country, but I would go to the same Yankee schoolmaster, have the same sweethearts and marry the same girl, provided she would consent to make another journey with the same companion. By the way, we were married in Bourbon County, Kentucky, when she was nineteen and I twenty. About four years ago we celebrated our golden wedding, and the morning after the celebration,
If I could live life over surely I could ask no better age than the one in which I have lived. We no longer toil over a mountain, but glide through it on ribbons of steel; telegraphy dives the deep and brings us the news of the old world every morning before breakfast; we talk with tongues of lightning through telephones and send messages on ether waves over the sea; we ride horse-cycles that run, never walk and live without eating; we travel in carriages drawn by electric steeds that never tire; the signal service gives us a geography of the weather, so the farmer may know whether or not to prepare to plow, and the Sunday school whether to arrange or to postpone its picnic tomorrow; airships mount the heavens, steamships plough the ocean's bosom, submarine torpedo boats undermine the deep with missiles of death, while photography turns one inside out, and doctors no longer guess at the location of a bullet. All these things have come to pass within my life-time.
What may the young before me expect in the next fifty years?
Recently I read an imaginary letter, supposed to have been written by a Wellsley College girl. It was dated one hundred years in the future.
She wrote:
"Father gave me a new airship a few weeks ago. I leave my home in Baltimore every morning after breakfast and reach Wellsley in time for classes. We have only thirty minutes in school in the morning and fifteen in the afternoon. Our teachers are in telepathic touch with all knowledge and we get it in condensed form. A few days ago, just after lunch at noon I took a spin up into Canada; the machine got a little out of fix, so I jumped on a gyroscope and returned in time for dinner at six.
"Yesterday I sailed over to New York City and took dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria; had two capsules for dinner and they were delicious. I read how the people used to sit around tables and eat all kinds of things. It must have been funny to see their mouths all going at one time. Then they had stomach trouble--indigestion they called it. Now we have everything necessary for the human system put up in capsules; we get up a thousand feet above the earth where the air is pure, so we ought to live to be two hundred years old.
"Last week my classmate and I took a flying trip to see the Panama Canal, and while there we decided to take in the Exposition at San Francisco next day. There we saw many antiquated machines called automobiles; they used to run around the streets in rubber stockings, honking horns to warn the poor, then turning turtle they killed or maimed the rich. In one department we saw an animal with long tail, and a mane on its neck. They called it a horse and told us that years ago horses were harnessed and driven about the streets, while the fast ones were raced for money."
That young woman may be all right about her capsule dinners and condensed instruction, but one hundred years from now, when on her way from the west to Wellsley if she will stop in Lexington, Ky., she will see a horse sale in progress; horses selling from five hundred to ten thousand dollars that will trot or pace a mile in less than two minutes, while slow ones will be hitched to dead wagons, used to gather up those who have fallen from airships and gyroscopes. It may be that one hundred years in the future airships will be seen soaring over the cities, delivering packages in parachutes at the back doors of residences, but the day will never dawn when there will be an airship, gyroscope, or an automobile that will supplant the fleet-footed, sleek-coated, handsome Kentucky horse.
Now I come to the more practical, for I do not bring you this talk, challenging your criticism or inviting your praise of it as a literary production, but with the purpose of helping some one live as I would wish to live if I had my life to live over.
First, to the boys before me. If I had life to live over one of my first purposes would be to seek my calling in life. Do you know half the failures of life come from misfits of occupation? There are lawyers starving for want of clients, doctors with patients under monuments, and preachers talking to empty pews, who might have been successful in factories or furrows. Cowper was a failure as a lawyer, he was a success as a poet; Goldsmith was a bungling surgeon, he was a power with his pen; Horace Greely was a success in the Tribune office, he was a failure as a farmer and a slow candidate for president. When U.S. Grant was a very young man his father sent him to sell a horse to a buyer and instructed him to ask one hundred dollars, but if he could not get that amount to take eighty-five. The buyer looked the horse over and said: "Young man, what is your price?" Young Grant replied: "Father told me to ask you one hundred dollars, but if you would not give that to take eighty-five." It is needless to say the calling of U.S. Grant was not horse trading. This same young man afterwards tried the grocery business and bought potatoes far and wide to corner the market, but the price went down, the potatoes rotted in Grant's bins and his grocery effort was on a par with his horse trading. He then tried the ice market but that became watered stock on his hands and again he was a failure. Later on in life 'mid roar of cannon and rattle of musketry the misfit found his element. Here he was so sure of his calling he made his motto, "I'll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer," and to the general, who could not drive a horse trade, or corner the potato market, or deal in ice, one of the greatest generals the world ever knew surrendered his sword, and from the highest military position Grant was called to be President of the United States.
If it is true that "ever since creation shot its first shuttle through chaos design has marked the course of every golden thread," then every human being is designed to fill a certain place in life. There are young women teaching school, getting to be old maids, who should be the wives of good husbands, and there are some wives who ought to be old maid "schoolmarms."
We have born architects, born orators, born bookkeepers, born musicians, born poets, born preachers, born teachers, born surgeons, born bankers, born blacksmiths, born merchants, born farmers. Two farmers live side by side; one doesn't seem to work hard, yet everything is neatness from one end of the farm to the other; his neighbor works hard, yet the cattle are in his corn, the fences are broken, gates off the hinges and everything seems out of order. That man was not made to be a farmer. He should rent out, or sell out, and go to the legislature, or find some other place he can fill. Matthew Arnold said: "Better be a Napoleon of book-blacks, or an Alexander of chimney-sweeps, than an attorney, who, like necessity, knows no law." There are born shoemakers cobbling in Congress, while statesmen are pegging away on a shoe-last because their brains have not been capitalized by education and opportunity. There are born preachers at work in machine shops, and born mechanics rattling around in pulpits like a mustard seed in an empty gourd; born surgeons are carving beef in butcher stalls, while here and there butchers are operating for appendicitis.
God planted the hardy pine on the hills of New England, and the magnolia down in the sunny South-land. Let some horticulturist compel the magnolia to climb the cold hills of New England, and the northern tree to come down and take its place in the "land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom," and everything in both will protest against the mistake.
Lowell said: "Every baby boy is born with a calling." With some this calling is very definite. It was definite with George Stevenson when in childhood he made engines of mud with sticks for smoke-stacks. It was definite with Thomas A. Edison, who, instead of selling newspapers, went to experimenting with acids, and charged a steel stirrup that lifted him into the electric saddle of the world. With others it is very indefinite. Patrick Henry failed at everything he undertook until he began talking, when he soon became the golden mouthed orator of his age. Peter Cooper failed until he took to making glue, then his business "stuck" to everybody and he made a fortune out of which he built Cooper Union for the education of poor boys. I have a grandson whose calling was indefinite. He was named for his grandfather, to whom fishing is a fad. During my rest season I go fishing almost every day. While I make an exception of Sunday I can appreciate the minister who was a great fisherman. On his way to an appointment Sunday morning he came upon a lad fishing in a wayside stream. Halting he said: "My boy, this is the Sabbath day and the good Book says you should remember to keep it holy." Just then a fish seized the boy's bait and drew the float under, when the good minister excitedly said: "Pull, pull. Ah! that's a good one. I'll try that place myself some other day."
Fishing is my favorite sport. My grandson was a baseball fiend and a football player. He was hurt in a football game and I wrote him, warning him against his recklessness, and to the admonition I added: "Twenty-five boys have been killed already this season playing football; it's a brutal game anyway."
He replied: "Dear Grandfather, I am sorry so many boys have been killed playing football, but I read recently that last summer two hundred and fifty men were drowned while out fishing; would it not be well for you to keep off Lake Ellerslie? You say football is a brutal game; I submit to you, Grandpa, that the man who takes an innocent worm or a minnow, strings it on a steel hook, and sinking it into the water, jerks the gills out of an innocent fish, is more cruel than the boy who kicks another around for exercise. I need a pair of baseball shoes, number six and a half; send them by express." He got the shoes, and I decided he was called to be a lawyer.
Young man, if you get to be a preacher and cannot put force into your sermon, the world doesn't want to hear you preach, but if you are a good cobbler it will wear your shoes, if a good baker it will eat your bread, or if a good barber it will let you put your razor to its throat.
Remember in making your choice, "Honor and fame from no condition rise, Act well your part; there the honor lies."
If I could live life over, I would not be content with a common school education. In my youth circumstances lifted a dead wall against my hopes, but if given another chance I would somehow press my way to where higher education scatters its trophies at the feet of youth, for while it is true some of the most successful men of our country graduated from the high school of "hard knocks" and universities of adversity, yet the humblest toil is more easily accomplished and better done where college education guides.
To college education, however, I would add the education which comes from rubbing against the world. Some one has said: "For every ounce of book knowledge one needs a half dozen ounces of common sense with which to apply it." Douglas Jerrold said: "I have a friend who can speak fluently a dozen different languages but has not a practical idea to express in any one of them."
An old woman suffering from rheumatism was asked by a friend: "Did you ever try electricity?"
She answered: "Yes, I was struck by lightning once but it didn't do me any good."
In this many sided age one needs to educate muscle, nerves, heart and conscience as well as brain. That man who is all brain and no heart, goes through the world with his intellect shining above his bosom like an electric light over a graveyard.
Young people, do you know you live in a testing world, a world in which all buds and blossoms are tested? The bud that stands the test of wind and frost goes on to flower and fruitage; the bud that can't stand the test goes with the dust to be trampled under foot. Every cannon made by the government is tested; the cannon that can stand the test goes into battleship or land fort, the cannon that can't stand the test goes into the junk pile.
Yonder in Virginia a few years ago, there was a young man who had everything an indulgent father could give him, but in school his character could not stand the test, and he exchanged his books for wine and cards. He married a beautiful young woman, shot her to death in his automobile and died himself in the electric chair, leaving his old father in a desolate home with harrowing memories tearing his heart; while over the life of an innocent babe he hung a cloud as dark as was ever woven out of the world's misfortune, and sent another life to wander in painted shame outside life's eden of purity, the barb of conscious guilt to be driven deeper and deeper into her soul by the scorn of a pitiless world. All because young Beatty could not stand the test!
Harry Thaw had everything wealth and refinement could bring into a young life, but he sacrificed all upon unhallowed altars, and with the brand of Cain upon his brow, he was cast into a madman's cell. He could not stand the test.
Lord Byron was Britain's brilliant bard. He could have lived in England's glory and then slept with England's buried greatness in Westminster Abbey, if he had stood the test; but at the age of thirty-seven, when he should have been on an upward flight to greater fame, he drew the "strings of his discordant harp" about him and over them sent the bitter wail:
Younder in a cabin a babe was born. When eleven years of age he helped his mother clear out a patch and raise a garden. Later on he lay in front of a wood fire, studying lessons for the morrow. Later in life he went to college, with only a few cents in his pocket. He went to church and there gave part of his little all in a collection for missionary work. The next Saturday he earned a dollar with a jack-plane; at the end of his college term he had paid his way and had seven dollars left. At twenty-eight this young man was in the senate of his state, at thirty-six he was in Congress, and twenty-seven years from the time James A. Garfield rang the bell of Hiram College for his board he went into the White House as President of the United States. He could stand the test. Boys, can you stand the test? During the Spanish American war there was a regiment called the "Rough Riders." It was made up of picked young men from different states of the Union. It was this regiment that made the famous charge up San Juan Hill. At the close of the war, the regiment was mustered out of service. The Colonel, giving his farewell address, said: "You have made an honorable record in war, now go back to your homes and make honorable record in peace."
Sixteen years of that record is made. The Colonel has been President of the United States for seven years of that time. General Leonard Wood has gone to the front of the army, and others of the regiment have become successful professional and business men; but some have gone to jails and penitentiaries, one died not long since in the streets of New York City and was buried in a pauper's grave; some are fugitives from justice.
What is true of that regiment, is in some measure true of every body of young men and boys I meet. In my presence are boys who will be leaders of thought and action twenty years from now in whatever community they dwell. There is a boy before me who will be a successful merchant, there's one who will be a banker, another will be a lawyer, others will lead in other lines. But alas! in my presence now, looking me in the face this minute, there may be a boy, or boys, who will stain with blood the stony path to despair.
Do you say that no such ignominious possibility hangs over any boy in this audience? I tell you it is not always the first, but sometimes the fairest born. I know a man who in his youth drove his father's fine horses, romped and rested on the richest blue-grass lawn, ate from spotless linen and lived in luxury, who now eats from the bare tables of low saloons, and is often given shelter by an old colored "mammy," who was once his father's slave.
I have in mind a schoolmate, whose father lived in a fine country home two miles from the schoolhouse. The influence of my schoolmate's mother was pure as the diamond dew he brushed from the bending grass in barefoot days. But he left the country home and the last time I saw him he was a vagabond, begging bread from negro cabin doors. Ah! mother, you can't tell which boy.
In a large city a few years ago a man stood at the side door of a saloon at two o'clock in the morning. His clothes were worn and the matted hair hung about his face. He waited, hoping some one would come along and give him the price of a drink. Two young men, one of them a reporter on a leading daily, came down the street. As they neared the poor fellow, one said to the other: "Did you ever see such an appeal for a drink? Here, hobo, take this dime and buy you one."
Seizing his hand his friend said: "No, let's do the job like good Samaritans. Come in, tramp, and have a drink with us."
The three entered the saloon, the glasses were filled and the tramp took his and draining it, said: "Young men, I'm very thirsty, may I have another?"
"Yes, help yourself," was the reply, and the tramp took the second drink. Then lifting his hat he said:
"Young men, you call me a hobo, but I see in you a picture of my lost manhood. Once I had a face as fair as yours, and wore as good clothes as you have now. I had a home where love lit the flame on the altar, but I put out the fire and to-night I'm a wanderer without a home. I had a wife as beautiful as an artist's dream, but I took the pearl of her love, dropped it in the wine glass, Cleopatra-like I saw it dissolve and I quaffed it down. I had a sweet child I fondly loved, and still love, though I have not seen her for twelve years; a young woman now in her grandfather's home, she is deprived of the heritage of a father's good name. Young men, I once had aspirations and ambitions that soared as high as the morning star, but I clipped their wings, I strangled them and they died. Call me a tramp, do you? I'm a preacher without a charge, a lawyer without a brief, a husband without a wife, a father without a child, a man without a friend. I thank you for the drinks. Go to your homes and on soft beds may you sleep well; I'll go out and sleep on yonder bench in the night wind. A few more drinks, a few more drunkard's dreams, and I'll go out into the moonless, starless night of a hopeless forever."
Oh! how I would like to help some boy in this audience stand on his two feet and with clear brain, manly muscle, and moral courage fight and win the battle of life. How it would rejoice my soul if I could, with earnest appeal, throw about some mother's boy an armor of celestial atmosphere against which the arrows of evil would beat in vain, and fall harmless at his feet.
Hear me, boys; never was there a day when character counted for so much as now; never a day when a young man, equipped with education and stability of character, filled with energy and ambition, was in such demand as he is today; while on the other hand, never was there a day when a young man with bad habits was in so little demand as now. The industrial world is closing its doors against young men who are not sober, industrious and competent. Even a saloon-keeper advertised thus: "Wanted--A man to tend bar, who does not drink intoxicating liquors." How would this read: "Wanted -- A young man to sell shoes, who goes bare-footed."
Young women, just here I have a question for you. If the railroad company does not want the drinking man, if the merchant discriminates against him, and even the saloon-keeper does not want him for bar-tender, do you want him for a husband? Can you afford to wrap up your hopes of happiness in him and to him swear away your young life and love?
Some young woman may say: "If I taboo the drinking man, I may be an old maid." Then be an old maid, get some "bloom of youth," paint up and love yourself. John B. Gough said: "You better be laughed at for not being married, than never to laugh any more because you are married."
If I could live life over there are some things I would not do. I would not stop smoking as I did thirty-five years ago, because I never would begin and therefore would not need to stop. I am not a fanatic on the question, but I believe every father in my presence, who uses tobacco, will be glad to have me say that which I will now say to the boys who are dulling their brains, poisoning their blood and weakening their hearts by the use of cigarettes.
Boys, I believe a cigar made me tell my first falsehood. When I was fifteen years of age I felt I must smoke if I ever expected to be a man. Father smoked, our pastor smoked, and so did almost every man in our neighborhood. My mother opposed the habit, but I thought mother did not know what it took to make a man.
I heard her make an engagement to spend a whole day ten miles from home the following week, and that day I set apart for learning to smoke cigars. I laid in some fine ones, six for five cents, and when mother went out the gate on her visit, I started for the barn. In a shed back of the barn I took out my cigars, determined to learn that day if it required the six cigars for my graduation. The first cigar was lighted and with every puff I felt the manhood coming; but in about five minutes I felt the manhood going . Just then my uncle called: "George, where are you?" When I answered he said: "Come here and hold this colt while I knock out a blind tooth."
Horsemen before me know some colts have blind teeth and to save the eyes these must be removed. I staggered to the colt, held the halter rein and when the tooth was removed my uncle, looking at me, said: "What's the matter with you? You are pale as death."
"Nothing, only it always did make me sick to see a blind tooth knocked out of a horse's mouth," I replied.
My uncle said: "You better lie down on the grass until it passes off," and I did.
But I kept on after that until I learned to smoke like a man. When years had passed and I became editor of a paper it seemed to me I could write better editorials with the smoke curling about my face. One morning I finished my breakfast before Mrs. Bain had half finished hers. Lighting my cigar I stood by the fire chatting and smoking until the stub was all that remained. Then, as was my custom, I walked up to kiss her good-bye when she said: "Good-bye. But, I would like to ask you a question. How would you like to have me finish my breakfast before you are half through yours, light a cigar, smoke it to the stub, and with tobacco on my lips and breath offer to kiss you good morning?"
I said: "You don't have to kiss me," and with this I left for my work. On the way her question seemed to be waiting my answer, and I gave it in a resolve that she should never again have cause to repeat that question, and with my resolve went the cigar.
About this time a co-worker joined me in the same resolution, which helped me to keep mine. After tea that evening Mrs. Bain said: "I did not know you were so sensitive, or I should not have said what I did." I did not tell her then of my promise, lest I should fail to keep it. Thirty-five years have passed and not a single cigar have I had between my lips since that morning.
Boys, take one five-cent cigar after each meal, add up the nickels for one year, put the money at interest, next year, and every year do the same, compounding the interest, and in thirty-five years you will have thirty-five hundred dollars--the price of a home for your old age. I do not hope to convert old smokers, but if I can persuade one young man in this audience to throw away the cigarette, never to smoke one again, then I will have honored this hour's service.
If I could live life over I would take the same total-abstinence pledge I took fifty years ago and have kept inviolate to this day. I would take it, not only because of its personal benefit to me, but because of what it has led me to do for others.
It is said reformers never expect to see the bread they cast upon the waters; inventors may, but not reformers. Yet I have lived to see my bread come back "buttered" in my old age.
I have lived to see thousands of men and women to whom I gave the pledge in their youth, wearing it still as a garland about their brows, and their children, by precept and example of parents, keep step with the onward march of the temperance army.
I have lived to see more than one hundred counties of Kentucky, in which I established Good Templar Lodges, when bottles were on sideboards in the homes, and barrooms in almost every crossroad village, now in the dry column.
I have lived to see seventeen states under prohibition, fifty millions of people of the United States living under prohibitory laws, the Congress of the United States giving a majority vote for submitting national prohibition to the people, and the great empire of Russia going dry in a day.
Sweet is the "buttered bread" that is coming to me after these many years since I cast my bread upon the waters, when days were dark, discouragements many and faith weak. I am waiting now for another slice of this "buttered bread" about the size of old Kentucky dry. If I could live life over I would put a better bit to my tongue, and a better bridle on my temper. An Englishman said: "My wife has a temper; if she could get rid of it I would not exchange her for any woman in the world."
Two men meet and have a misunderstanding; one flies into a passion, shoots or stabs, while the other stands placid and self-contained, preserving his dignity. The world calls the first a brave man and the latter a coward; but Solomon declared the man who rules himself to be "greater than he that taketh a city."
Oh! the tragedies that lie in the wake of the tempest of temper. On the dueling field such men as Alexander Hamilton went down to death for want of self-control. Andrew Jackson killed Dickerson; Benton of Missouri killed Lucas; General Marmaduke killed General Walker. Pettus and Biddle, one a Congressman, the other a paymaster in the army, had a war of words, a challenge followed; one being near-sighted selected five feet as the distance for the duel, and there educated men, with pistols almost touching, stood, fired and both were killed.
Senator Carmack of Tennessee, criticised Colonel Cooper as a machine politician. Cooper said: "Put my name in your paper again, and I'll kill you." Young Cooper felt in his rage that he must settle the trouble. Did he settle it? The bullet that went through the heart of Carmack went through the heart of his wife, threw a shadow over the life of his child, and draped Tennessee in mourning. Did he settle it? He started a tempest that will howl through his life while memory lasts and echo through his soul to all eternity. Oh! that men would realize that to walk honorably and deal justly insures in time vindication from all calumny.
Abraham Lincoln was called the "Illinois baboon" by a leading journal, but Mr. Lincoln placidly read the charge, and told a joke as a safety valve for whatever anger he may have felt. One hundred years go by and the President leaves Washington and goes on a long journey to stand at a cabin door in Kentucky, there to pay tribute to a man who "never lost his balance or tore a passion to tatters."
I stood in front of the great Krupp gun at the World's Fair, and as the soldier in charge told me that one discharge cost one thousand dollars, and it could send a shell sixteen miles and pierce iron plated ships, its lips seemed loaded with death and it spoke of war and bloodshed and hate.
A little later I entered the Hall of Fine Arts and looked upon that impressive picture entitled, "Breaking Home Ties." The lad is about to go out from the roof that has sheltered him from babyhood, to be his own guide in the big wide world. His mother holds his hand as she looks love into his eyes, and gives him her warnings and blessing; the father, with his boy's valise in his hand, has turned away with a lump in his throat, while even the dog seems to be joining in the loving farewell.
Turning away from that picture, the thought came: Ah! that means more than Krupp guns. It means the coming of a day when love shall rule and war shall cease, when reason and righteousness shall be the arbitrators for differences between nations, when owls and bats will nest in the portholes of battleships, and each nation will vie with the other in warring against the kingdoms of want and wickedness. When a man requested Bishop McIntyre to preach his wife's funeral sermon, and told him of her many beautiful traits, Bishop McIntyre said: "Brother, did you ever tell her all these sweet things before she died?" Just here Sam Jones would say: "Husbands, go home and kiss your wives. Tell them they are the dearest, sweetest things on the earth; you may have to stretch the truth a little, but say it anyway."
A few years ago, just before the Christmas holidays, I wrote my daughter, saying: "I wish you would find out from your mother what she would like for a Christmas gift. However, don't tell her I wrote you to do this. Also suggest something for the grandchildren that I may bring each some little remembrance that will please them." I closed by saying:
Boys and girls, don't speak back to mother. You love her and don't mean to offend, but it hurts her. She was patient with you in your infancy; be patient with her in her old age. From her birth she has been your loyal, loving slave. She will go away and leave you after a little while, and oh! how you will miss her when she's gone. Deal gently with her now; speak kindly to her and when she's gone memories of your love and kindness to mother will come to you like sweet perfume from wooded blossoms.
Young lady graduate of high school or college, do you realize what your father has done for you, and the sacrifices he has made that you might have what he has never had--a diploma? Go, put your fair tender cheek against the weather-beaten face of your father, print with rosy lips a kiss of gratitude upon his furrowed brow, and tell him you appreciate all he has done for you.
I have been talking to you an hour about what I would do if I could live life over. If I had life to live over would I do any better than I have done? If I am no better now, than I was five years ago, if I am to be no better five years hence than I am now, then I would do no better if I had another trial.
However, I cannot live life over. The sand in the hour-glass is running low and when gone can never be replaced, and I am not much struck on old age. It is said to have its compensations, in that the "aches and asthmas of old age are no worse than the measles, mumps, whooping-coughs and appendicitis pains of youth." Righteous old age should be better than youth. The ocean of time with its breakers and perils face the young, while for the righteous old the storms are past, and they are
I cannot help these grey hairs or the wrinkles on my brow, but I can keep my heart young, and I do . I enjoy the company of old people, but delight more in associating with the young.
Dr. A. A. Willetts lectured on "Sunshine" sixty years ago. In his ninetieth year he was still lecturing; had he lectured on shadows he would doubtless have died many years before, and never been known as the "Apostle of Sunshine."
Solomon said: "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Never lock the door of your heart against the sunshine of cheerfulness, and remember it is not the exclusive blessing of youth but blooms in the heart of any age. With some it seems to be an inheritance. It kisses some babies in the cradle, and the radiance of that kiss lingers through three-score years and ten; while others are born cross, live cross and die cross. A babe of this latter kind came into a home and kept up its wailing for several days. The little six-year old boy of the home said: "Mother, did you say little brother came from heaven?" "Yes, dear; why do you ask?"
"Well, no wonder the angels bounced him," the boy replied.
I know a woman who is forever telling her trials. If you do not listen to her story you must read it on her countenance. Nearby is another who has lost her parents; indeed all her near relatives are gone; not a flower left to bloom on the desert of old age. Yet, she hides her sorrows beneath the soul's altar of hope and meets the world with a smile. Doubtless the first woman wonders why she is so slighted and the company of the other courted. She should know it is for the same reason that honey-bees and humming birds light on sweet flowers instead of dry mullien stalks, and mocking-birds and canaries are caged instead of owls and rain-crows.
Some persons seem to relish the "cold soup of retrospect" and persist in picking the "bones of regret," without any appetite for the present or promises of the future. Beside one of these I would place a happy-hearted soul, who laughs through the window of the eye and on whose face you can read,
I know a millionaire, who controls numerous industries, whose wife must apply cold cloths to his head at night to induce sleep. I know another man not so well off in this world's goods, whose wife must apply the cold water to get him awake. Care is often pillowed in a palace, while contentment is asleep in a cottage.
At the close of my lecture at a chautauqua several years ago, a gentleman said to me: "Sir, we live in a very humble cottage in this town, but there is a big welcome over the door for you and we want you to take tea with us." I accepted the invitation and soon was seated on the porch of the small cottage home. While my host was inside getting a pitcher of ice water, I looked across the way and there was the home of a railroad king, his wealth numbered by millions, and the grounds surrounding his home were rich in flower beds, fountains and forest trees. My host, pouring the water, said: "You see we are very fortunately situated here. Our little home is inexpensive and our taxes very light. Our rich neighbor across the way employs three gardeners to care for those grounds; he pays all the taxes, has all the care; they do not cost us a cent, yet we sit here on our little porch and drink in their beauty." There was a philosopher.
John Wanamaker can pay $100,000 for a picture, which he did some years ago, and hang it on the walls of his mansion home, but you go out in the country in the springtime, get up in the early morning while the cattle are still sleeping in the barnyard and the birds silent in the trees, watch the rich glow of the day god as it comes peeping through the windows of the morning, then see the birds leave their bowers, the larks to fly away to the fields, the mocking-bird to sing in the cedar at the garden gate, the robin to chirp to its mate, and you will see a picture which will pale that of the merchant prince.
Or go out on a summer evening just after a rain storm, when nature hangs itself out to dry; when the golden slipper of the god of day hangs upon the topmost bough of the tallest tree. You will see a picture no artist's brush can paint. And God does not hang these pictures on a wall twenty feet by ten, but on the blue tapestry of the sky for the world's poor to admire "without money and without price." Abraham Lincoln well said: "God must have loved the common people, else he wouldn't have made so many of them."
Let me illustrate the two classes of people to which I have referred. An old man who dwelt in the shadows of life said: "My life has been one continual drudgery and disappointment; for fifty years I have had to get up at 5 o'clock every morning while others enjoyed their sleep, then all day in the harness of oppression I have had to work with bad luck dogging my footsteps."
His daughter, thinking to cheer him, said, "Father, don't get discouraged. You have one comfort anyway; it won't be long till the end of toil will come, when you will have a good long rest in the grave where no misfortune can reach you."
"I don't know about that," replied the father; "it will be about my luck for the next morning to be resurrection day and I'll have to be up at daylight as usual."
Another man, who always looked on the bright side of life, and when anything went wrong always looked up something good to match it, happened to lose a fine horse. When friends expressed sympathy he said: "I can't complain; I never lost a horse before." Then his crop failed and he said: "After ten years of good crops I have no kick coming because of one failure." Finally, poor fellow, a railroad train ran over him and both feet had to be amputated at the ankles. A friend called to see him and said: "Jim, what have you to say after this misfortune?"
His reply was: "Well, I always did suffer with cold feet."
Look on the bright side of life, remembering that very often,
When our two boys were babies our home was a country cottage and our land possession one acre. Nearby lived a young man whose father left him a blue-grass farm. His home was a handsome brick house; he had servants and drove fine horses. Often when seated on the little porch of our humble home, he would pass by, when the feet of his horses and wheels of his fine carriage would dash the dust into our faces. One evening when he passed I said: "Never mind, Anna, some day we'll live in a fine house, we'll have servants and horses and we'll be 'somebodies'." I thought money would bring happiness, and the more money the more happiness.
We now live in a good home, have servants and horse and carriage; we've traveled several times together from ocean to ocean, yet I have never seen a train of Pullman palace cars that can compare in memory with the two trains that used to leave that little cottage home every evening for dreamland.
Have some of you had sorrows you could not harmonize with the logic of life? Leave them with Him who "notes the sparrow's fall." Some one has said: "There are angels in the quarries of life only the blasts of misfortune and chisels of adversity can carve into beauty."
Doctor Theodore Cuyler said: "God washes the eyes of His children with tears that they may better see His providences."
Doctor Gutherie said: "Because I am seventy, my hair white and crows' feet around my eyes, they tell me I'm growing old. That's not I, that's the house in which I live; I'm on the inside; the house may go to pieces but I shall live on eternally young."
Since I cannot live life over, since the gate at the end of life's journey swings but one way, and of all the millions who have passed through, not one but the Crucified Son of God has returned, why should I select such a subject for a lecture? When one is on a journey he has never made before it is well to consult one who has traveled the road and from him learn the things best to be done, and the places to shun. For more than three-score years and ten I have been making life's journey, and for more than forty years have been mingling with the masses and meeting with varied experiences. To those who are climbing the hill toward the noon of the journey my advice should be of value. With those who with me are facing the sinking sun, and the lengthening shadows falling behind, I thank God for that faith which comes from a diviner source than human science, that tells us,
It is said "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride." It is useless for me to wish to live life over or expect an extension of many more years of borrowed time, but I hope yet that along the shortening path I may open up here and there a spring that will refresh some thirsty soul and plant a flower that will brighten the path of some weary one. It is my desire that I may close the life I cannot live over in the city where it began, surrounded by loved ones in whose lives I have lived. I can think of no more fitting close to this lecture than to use a thought borrowed from another, in paying a tribute to my old Kentucky home:
SOURCES:
KERR, Judge Charles. History of Kentucky. Vol. V. P. 46. American Historical Society. Chicago. 1922.
BAIN, Col. George W. Chautauqua Lectures. Pp. 148-171. medellin.edu
Transcriptions by Sharon R. Becker, September of 2011.
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