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A MAN'S A MAN FOR A' THAT

BY ROBERT BURNS

Is there for honest poverty
That hings his head, an' a' that?
The coward slave, we pass him by--
We dare be poor for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Our toils obscure, an' a' that,
The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The man's the gowd [Footnote: gold] for a' that!

What tho' on hamely [Footnote: homely, plain] fare we dine,
Wear hoddin [Footnote: homespun] gray, an' a' that;
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine--
A man's a man, for a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their tinsel show, an' a' that,
The honest man, though e'er sae poor,
Is king o' men for a' that!

Ye see yon birkie [Footnote: fellow], ca'd a lord,
Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that;
Tho' hundreds worship at his word,
He's but a coof [Footnote: fool (pronounce like German _o_ or
_oe_)] for a' that;
For a' that, an' a' that,
His riband, star, an' a' that;
The man of independent mind,
He looks an' laughs at a' that.

A prince can mak a belted knight,
A marquis, duke, an' a' that;
But an honest man's aboon [Footnote: above] his might--
Gude faith, he maunna fa' [Footnote: must not claim (to make the
honest man)] that!
For a' that, an' a' that,
Their dignities, an' a' that,
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth,
Are higher ranks than a' that.

Then let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense an' worth, o'er a' the earth,
Shall bear the gree, [Footnote: prize] an' a' that.
For a' that, an' a' that,
It's comin' yet, for a' that--
That man to man, the warld o'er,
Shall brothers be for a' that.


ARTEMUS WARD'S LECTURE

From "Complete Works of Artemus Ward" with the permission of the
G. W. Dillingham Company, New York, publishers.

BY CHARLES FARRAR BROWN (ARTEMUS WARD)

I don't expect to do great things here--but I have thought that if I
could make money enough to buy me a passage to New Zealand I should
feel that I had not lived in vain. I don't want to live in vain. I'd
rather live in Texas--or here.

If you should be dissatisfied with anything here to-night--I will
admit you all free in New Zealand--if you will come to me there for the
orders. Any respectable cannibal will tell you where I live. This shows
that I have a forgiving spirit.

I really don't care for money. I only travel round to see the world and
to exhibit my clothes. These clothes I have on have been a great
success in America.

How often do large fortunes ruin young men! I should like to be ruined,
but I can get on very well as I am.

I am not an Artist. I don't paint myself--though perhaps if I were a
middle-aged single lady I should--yet I have a passion for pictures.--I
have had a great many pictures--photographs--taken of myself. Some of
them are very pretty--rather sweet to look at for a short time--and as
I said before, I like them. I've always loved pictures. I could draw on
wood at a very tender age. When a mere child I once drew a small
cartload of raw turnips over a wooden bridge.--The people of the
village noticed me. I drew their attention. They said I had a future
before me. Up to that time I had an idea it was behind me.

Time passed on. It always does, by the way. You may possibly have
noticed that Time passes on.--It is a kind of way Time has.

I became a man. I haven't distinguished myself at all as an artist--but
I have always been more or less mixed up with art. I have an uncle who
takes photographs--and I have a servant who--takes anything he can get
his hands on.

When I was in Rome--Rome in New York State, I mean--a distinguished
sculpist wanted to sculp me. But I said "No." I saw through the
designing man. My model once in his hands--he would have flooded the
market with my busts--and I couldn't stand it to see everybody going
round with a bust of me. Everybody would want one of course--and
wherever I should go I should meet the educated classes with my bust,
taking it home to their families. This would be more than my modesty
could stand--and I should have to return home--where my creditors are.

I like art. I admire dramatic art--although I failed as an actor.

It was in my schoolboy days that I failed as an actor.--The play was
"The Ruins of Pompeii."--I played the ruins. It was not a very
successful performance--but it was better than the "Burning Mountain."
He was not good. He was a bad Vesuvius.

The remembrance often makes me ask--"Where are the boys of my youth?" I
assure you this is not a conundrum. Some are amongst you here--some in
America--some are in jail.

Hence arises a most touching question--"Where are the girls of my
youth?" Some are married--some would like to be.

Oh, my Maria! Alas! she married another. They frequently do. I hope she
is happy--because I am.--Some people are not happy. I have noticed
that.

A gentleman friend of mine came to me one day with tears in his eyes. I
said, "Why these weeps?" He said he had a mortgage on his farm--and
wanted to borrow $200. I lent him the money--and he went away. Some
time afterward he returned with more tears. He said he must leave me
forever. I ventured to remind him of the $200 he borrowed. He was much
cut up. I thought I would not be hard upon him--so told him I would
throw off $100. He brightened--shook my hand--and said,--"Old friend--
I won't allow you to outdo me in liberality--I'll throw off the other
hundred."

I like Music.--I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am
saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even
than I am.

I met a man in Oregon who hadn't any teeth--not a tooth in his head--
yet that man could play on the bass drum better than any man I ever
met. He kept a hotel. They have queer hotels in Oregon. I remember one
where they gave me a bag of oats for a pillow--I had nightmares of
course. In the morning the landlord said,--"How do you feel--old hoss--
hay?"--I told him I felt my oats.

As a manager I was always rather more successful than as an actor.

Some years ago I engaged a celebrated Living American Skeleton for a
tour through Australia. He was the thinnest man I ever saw. He was a
splendid skeleton. He didn't weigh anything scarcely--and I said to
myself--the people of Australia will flock to see this tremendous cu-
riosity. It is a long voyage--as you know--from New York to Melbourne--
and to my utter surprise the skeleton had no sooner got out to sea than
he commenced eating in the most horrible manner. He had never been on
the ocean before--and he said it agreed with him--I thought so!--I
never saw a man eat so much in my life. Beef, mutton, pork--he
swallowed them all like a shark--and between meals he was often
discovered behind barrels eating hard-boiled eggs. The result was that,
when we reached Melbourne, this infamous skeleton weighed sixty-four
pounds more than I did!

I thought I was ruined--but I wasn't. I took him on to California--
another very long sea voyage--and when I got him to San Francisco I
exhibited him as a fat man.

This story hasn't anything to do with my entertainment, I know--but one
of the principal features of my entertainment is that it contains so
many things that don't have anything to do with it.


JIM BLUDSO, OF THE PRAIRIE BELLE

By permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin
Company, authorized publishers of this author's work.

BY JOHN HAY

Wall, no! I can't tell whar he lives,
Because he don't live, you see;
Leastways, he's got out of the habit
Of livin' like you and me.
Whar have you been for the last three year
That you haven't heard folks tell
How Jimmy Bludso passed in his checks
The night of the "Prairie Belle"?

He weren't no saint,--them engineers
Is all pretty much alike,--
One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
And another one here, in Pike;
A keerless man in his talk was Jim,
And an awkward hand in a row,
But he never flunked, and he never lied,--
I reckon he never knowed how.

And this was all the religion he had,--
To treat his engine well;
Never be passed on the river;
To mind the pilot's bell;
And if ever the "Prairie Belle" took fire,--
A thousand times he swore,
He'd hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last soul got ashore.

All boats has their day on the Mississip,
And her day come at last,--
The "Movastar" was a better boat,
But the "Belle" she _wouldn't_ be passed.
And so she come tearin' along that night--
The oldest craft on the line--
With a nigger squat on her safety valve,
And her furnace crammed, rosin and pine.

The fire bust out as she cleared the bar,
And burnt a hole in the night,
And quick as a flash she turned, and made
For that willer-bank on the right.
There was runnin' and cursing but Jim yelled out,
Over all the infernal roar,
"I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
Till the last galoot's ashore."

Through the hot, black breath of the burnin' boat
Jim Bludso's voice was heard,
And they all had trust in his cussedness,
And knowed he would keep his word.
And, sure's you're born, they all got off
Afore the smokestacks fell,--
And Bludso's ghost went up alone
In the smoke of the "Prairie Belle."

He weren't no saint,--but at jedgment
I'd run my chance with Jim,
'Longside of some pious gentlemen
That wouldn't shake hands with him.
He seen his duty, a dead-sure thing,--
And he went for it thar and then;
And Christ ain't agoing to be too hard
On a man that died for men.


THE TRIAL OF ABNER BARROW

From "The Boy Orator of Zepata City" in "The Exiles and Other Stories."
Copyrighted, 1894, Harper and Brothers. Reprinted with permission.

BY RICHARD HARDING DAVIS

Abe Barrow had been closely associated with the early history of
Zepata; he had killed in his day several of the Zepata citizens. His
fight with Thompson had been a fair fight--as those said who remembered
it--and Thompson was a man they could well spare; but the case against
Barrow had been prepared by the new and youthful district attorney, and
the people were satisfied and grateful.

Harry Harvey, "The Boy Orator of Zepata City," as he was called, turned
slowly on his heels, and swept the court room carelessly with a glance
of his clever black eyes. The moment was his.

"This man," he said, and as he spoke even the wind in the corridors
hushed for the moment, "is no part or parcel of Zepata city of to-day.
He comes to us a relic of the past--a past that was full of hardships
and glorious efforts in the face of daily disappointments,
embitterments and rebuffs. But the part _this_ man played in that
past lives only in the court records of that day. This man, Abe Barrow,
enjoys, and has enjoyed, a reputation as a 'bad man,' a desperate and
brutal ruffian. Free him to-day, and you set a premium on such
reputations; acquit him of this crime, and you encourage others to like
evil. Let him go, and he will walk the streets with a swagger, and
boast that you were afraid to touch him--_afraid_, gentlemen--and
children and women will point after him as the man who has sent nine
others into eternity, and who yet walks the streets a free man. And he
will become, in the eyes of the young and the weak, a hero and a god.

"For the last ten years, your honor, this man, Abner Barrow, has been
serving a term of imprisonment in the state penitentiary; I ask you to
send him back there again for the remainder of his life. Abe Barrow is
out of date. This Rip Van Winkle of the past returns to find a city
where he left a prairie town; a bank where he spun his roulette-wheel;
this magnificent courthouse instead of a vigilance committee! He is
there, in the prisoner's pen, a convicted murderer and an unconvicted
assassin, the last of his race,--the bullies and bad men of the
border,--a thing to be forgotten and put away forever from the sight of
men. And I ask you, gentlemen, to put him away where he will not hear
the voice of man nor children's laughter, nor see a woman's smile. Bury
him with the bitter past, with the lawlessness that has gone--that has
gone, thank God--and which must not return."

The district attorney sat down suddenly, and was conscious of nothing
until the foreman pronounced the prisoner at the bar guilty of murder
in the second degree.

Judge Truax leaned across his desk and said, simply, that it lay in his
power to sentence the prisoner to not less than two years' confinement
in the state penitentiary, or for the remainder of his life.

"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said with an old
man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own
behalf?"

Barrow's face was white with the prison tan, and pinched and hollow-
eyed and worn. When he spoke his voice had the huskiness which comes
from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's.

"I don't know, Judge," he said, "that I have anything to say in my own
behalf. I guess what the gentleman said about me is all there is to
say. I _am_ a back number, I _am_ out of date; I _was_ a loafer and a
blackguard. He told you I had no part or parcel in this city, or in
this world; that I belonged to the past; that I ought to be dead. Now
that's not so. I have just one thing that belongs to this city, and to
this world--and to me; one thing that I couldn't take to jail with me,
and I'll have to leave behind me when I go back to it. I mean my wife.
You, sir, remember her, sir, when I married her twelve years ago. She
gave up everything a woman ought to have, to come to me. She thought
she was going to be happy with me; that's why she come, I guess. Maybe
she was happy for about two weeks. After that first two weeks her life,
sir, was a hell, and I made it a hell. Respectable women wouldn't speak
to her because she was my wife--and she had no children. That was her
life. She lived alone over the dance-hall, and sometimes when I was
drunk--I beat her.

"At the end of two years I killed Welsh, and they sent me to the pen
for ten years, and she was free. She could have gone back to her folks
and got a divorce if she'd wanted to, and never seen me again. It was
an escape most women'd gone down on their knees and thanked their Maker
for.

"But what did this woman do--my wife, the woman I misused and beat and
dragged down in the mud with me? She was too mighty proud to go back to
her people, or to the friends who shook her when she was in trouble;
and she sold out the place, and bought a ranch with the money, and
worked it by herself, worked it day and night, until in ten years she
had made herself an old woman, as you see she is to-day.

"And for what? To get _me_ free again; to bring _me_ things to eat in
jail, and picture papers, and tobacco--when she was living on bacon and
potatoes, and drinking alkali water--working to pay for a lawyer to
fight for _me_--to pay for the _best_ lawyer.

"And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out of
jail to show her how I feel about it. It's all I've thought of when I
was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for her,
working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.

"And I can't, I can't! It's too late! It's too late! Don't send me back
for life! Give me a few years to work for her--to show her what I feel
here, what I never felt for her before. Look at her, gentlemen, look
how worn she is, and poorly, and look at her hands, and you men must
feel how I feel--I don't ask you for myself. I don't want to go free on
my own account. My God! Judge, don't bury me alive, as that man asked
you to. Give me this last chance. Let me prove that what I'm saying is
true."

Judge Truax looked at the papers on his desk for some seconds, and
raised his head, coughing as he did so.

"It lies--it lies at the discretion of this Court to sentence the
prisoner to a term of imprisonment of two years, or for an indefinite
period, or for life. Owing to--on account of certain circumstances
which were--have arisen--this sentence is suspended. This Court stands
adjourned."




PART THREE


PLATFORM PRACTICE

THE SPEECH OF FORMAL OCCASION


THE BENEFITS OF A COLLEGE EDUCATION

From an address by the President to the students of Harvard University,
at the announcement of Academic Distinctions, 1909

BY ABBOTT LAWRENCE LOWELL

This meeting is held not merely to honor the men who have won prizes,
attained high rank, or achieved distinction in studies. In a larger
sense it is a tribute paid by the University to the ideals of
scholarship. It is a public confession of faith in the aims for which
the University was established. We may, therefore, not inappropriately
consider here the nature and significance of scholarship.

Without attempting an exhaustive catalogue of the benefits of
education, we may note three distinct objects of college study. The
first is the development of the mental powers with a view to their use
in any subsequent career. In its broadest sense this may be called
training for citizenship, for we must remember that good citizenship
does not consist exclusively in rendering public service in political
and philanthropic matters. It includes also conducting an industrial or
professional career so as not to leave the public welfare out of sight.

Popular government is exacting. It implies that in some form every man
shall voluntarily consecrate a part of his time and force to the state,
and the better the citizen, the greater the effort he will make. On the
function of colleges in fitting men for citizenship and for active
work, much emphasis has been laid of late. Yet it is not the only aim
of college studies. Another object is cultivation of the mind,
refinement of taste, a development of the qualities that distinguish
the civilized man from the barbarian. Nor does the value of these
things lie in personal satisfaction alone. There is a culture that is
selfish and exclusive, that is self-centered and conceited. The
intellectual snob is quite as repellant as any other. But this is true
of the moral distortion of all good qualities. The culture that narrows
the sympathies, instead of enlarging them, has surely missed the object
that should give its chief worth and dignity. The culture that reveals
beauty in all its forms, that refines the sensibilities, and expands
the mental horizon, that, without a sense of superiority, desires to
share these things with others, and makes the lives of all men better
worth living, is like the glow of fire in a cold room. It is a form of
social service of a high order.

A third benefit of college education is the contact it affords with the
work of creative imagination. The highest type of scholar is the
creative scholar, just as the highest type of citizen is the statesman.
The greatest figures in history, as almost every one will admit, are
the thinkers and the rulers of men. People will always differ in the
relative value they ascribe to these two supreme forms of human power.
But if one may indulge in apocalyptic visions, I should prefer in
another world to be worthy of the friendship of Aristotle rather than
of Alexander, of Shakespeare or Newton than of Napoleon or Frederick
the Great.

When I spoke of the benefit of college life in training for
citizenship, and in imparting culture, I was obviously dealing with
things which lie within the reach of every student; but in speaking of
creative scholarship you may think that I am appealing only to the few
men who have the rare gift of creative genius. But happily the progress
of the world is not in the exclusive custody of the occasional men of
genius. Great originality is, indeed, rare; but on a smaller scale it
is not uncommon, and the same principles apply to the production of all
creative work. The great scholar and the lesser intellectual lights
differ in brilliancy, but the same process must be followed to bring
them to their highest splendor. Nor is it the genius alone, or even the
man of talent, who can enjoy and aid productive thought. It is not
given to all men to possess creative scholarship themselves; but most
men by following its footsteps can learn to respect it and feel its
charm; and for any man who passes through college without doing so,
college education has been in one of its most vital elements a failure.
If he has not recognized the glowing imagination, the lofty ideals, the
patience and the modesty, that characterize the true scholar, his time
here has been spent, not perhaps without profit, but without
inspiration.

All productive work is largely dependent upon appreciation by the
community. The great painters of Italy would have been sterile had not
the citizens of Florence been eager to carry Cimabue's masterpiece in
triumph through the streets. Kant would never have written among a
people who despised philosophy; and the discoveries of our own day
would have been impossible in an unscientific age. Every man who has
learned to respect creative scholarship can enter into its spirit, and
by respecting it he helps to foster it.


WHAT THE COLLEGE GIVES

From "Girls and Education," a commencement address, Bryn Mawr College,
1911, by permission of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton
Mifflin Company, authorized publishers of this author's works.

BY LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS

One of the best gifts that a college can bestow is the power of taking
a new point of view through putting ourselves into another's place. To
many students this comes hard, but come it must, as they hope to be
saved.

To the American world the name of Charles Eliot Norton stands for all
that is fastidious, even for what is over-fastidious; but Charles Eliot
Norton's collection of verse and prose called "The Heart of Oak Books"
shows a catholicity which few of his critics could approach, a refined
literary hospitality not less noteworthy than the refined human
hospitality of his Christmas Eve at Shady Hill. As an old man this
interpreter of Dante saw and hailed with delight the genius of Mr.
Kipling. If you leave college without catholicity of taste, something
is wrong either with the college or with you.

As in literature, so in life. The greatest teachers--even Christ
himself--have taught nothing greater than the power of seeing with the
eyes of another soul. "Browning," said a woman who loves poetry, "seems
to me not so much man as God." For Browning, beyond all men in the past
century, beyond nearly all men of all time, could throw himself into
the person of another.

"God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures
Boasts two soul-sides, one to face the world with,
One to show a woman when he loves her,"

said this same great poet, writing to his wife. But Browning has as
many soul-sides as humanity. Hence it has been truly called a new life,
like conversion, or marriage, or the mystery of a great sorrow,--a
change and a bracing change in our outlook on the whole world, to
discover Browning. The college should be our Browning, revealing the
motive power of every life, the poetry of good and bad. It is only the
"little folk of little soul" who come out of college as the initiated
members of an exclusive set. Justify yourself and your college years by
your catholic democracy.

It is the duty of the college not to train only, but to inspire; to
inspire not to learning only, but to a disciplined appreciation of the
best in literature, in art, and in life, to a catholic taste, to a
universal sympathy. It is the duty of the student to take the
inspiration, to be not disobedient to the heavenly vision, but to
justify four years of delight, by scholarship at once accurate and
sympathetic, by a finer culture, by a leadership without self-seeking
or pride, by a whole-souled democracy. How simple and how old it all
is! Yet it is not so simple that any one man or woman has done it to
perfection; nor so old that any one part of it fails to offer fresh
problems and fresh stimulus to the most ambitious of you all.

Nothing is harder than to take freely and eagerly the best that is
offered us, and never turn away to the pursuit of false gods. Now the
best that is offered in college is the inspiration to learn, and having
learned, to do:--

"Friends of the great, the high, the perilous years,
Upon the brink of mighty things we stand--
Of golden harvests and of silver tears,
And griefs and pleasures that like grains of sand
Gleam in the hourglass, yield their place and die."

So said the college poet.

"Art without an ideal," said a great woman, "is neither nature nor art.
The question involves the whole difference between Phidias and Mme.
Tussaud." Let us never forget that the chief business of college
teachers and college taught is the giving and receiving of ideals, and
that the ideal is a burning and a shining light, not now only, or now
and a year or two more, but for all time. What else is the patriot's
love of country, the philosopher's love of truth, the poet's love of
beauty, the teacher's love of learning, the good man's love of an
honest life, than keeping the ideal, not merely to look at, but to see
by? In its light, and only in its light, the greatest things are done.
Thus the ideal is not merely the most beautiful thing in the world; it
is the source of all high efficiency. In every change, in every joy or
sorrow that the coming years may bring, do you who graduate to-day
remember that nothing is so practical as a noble ideal steadily and
bravely pursued, and that now, as of old, it is the wise men who see
and follow the guiding star.

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