and confidence, like his now immortal predecessor, is as incapable of bullying a strong power as he is of wronging a weak one. [Applause.] He feels and knows for has he not tested it in the currents of the heady fight as well as in the toilsome work of administration ?—that the nation over whose destinies he presides has a giant's strength in the works of war as in the works of peace. [Applause.] But that consciousness of strength brings with it no temptation to do injury to any power on earth, the proudest or the humblest. We frankly confess we seek the friendship of all the powers; we want to trade with all peoples; we are conscious of resources that will make our commerce a source of advantage to them and of profit to ourselves. But no wantonness of strength will ever induce us to drive a hard bargain with another nation because it is weak, nor will any fear of ignoble criticism tempt us to insult or defy a great power because it is stronger or even because it is friendly. [Loud applause.] The attitude of our diplomacy may be indicated in a text of Scripture which Franklin, the first and greatest of our diplomats, tells us passed through his mind when he was presented at the Court of Versailles. It was a text his father used to quote to him in the old candle shop in Boston when he was a boy: "Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings." Let us be diligent in our business and we shall standstand, you see, not crawl, nor swagger-stand, as a friend and equal, asking nothing, putting up with nothing but what is right and just, among our peers in the great democracy of nations. [Great applause.] OMAR KHAYYÁM Speech of John Hay, American Ambassador to Great Britain, at a dinner of the Omar Khayyám Club, London, December 8, 1897. Henry Norman, president of the Club, took the chair and in introducing Colonel Hay, as the guest of the evening, spoke of him as soldier, diplomatist, scholar, poet and Omarian. GENTLEMEN :-I cannot sufficiently thank you for the high and unmerited honor you have done me to-night. I feel keenly that on such an occasion, with such company, my place is below the salt, but as you kindly invited me it was not in human nature for me to refuse. Although in knowledge and comprehension of the two great poets whom you are met to commemorate I am the least among them, there is no one who regards them with greater admiration, or reads them with more enjoyment than myself. I can never forget my emotions when I first saw Fitzgerald's translation of the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on Chapman's Homer, has described the sensation once for all: Then felt I like some watcher of the skies, The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the singular grace of those amazing stanzas, were not more wonderful than the depth and breadth of their profound philosophy, their knowledge of life, their dauntless courage, their serene facing of the ultimate problems of life and of death. Of course the doubt did not spare me, which has assailed many as ignorant as I was of the literature of the East, whether it was the poet or his translator to whom was due this splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction of a new song, or a mystification of a great modern, careless of fame and scornful of his time? Could it be possible that in the eleventh century, so far away as Khorassan, so accomplished a man of letters lived, with such distinction, such breadth, such insight, such calm disillusion, such cheerful and jocund despair? Was this Weltschmerz, which we thought a malady of our day, endemic in Persia in 1100? My doubt lasted only till I came upon a literal translation of the Rubaiyat, and I saw that not the least remarkable quality of Fitzgerald's was its fidelity to the original. In short, Omar was a Fitzgerald before the latter, or Fitzgerald was a reincarnation of Omar. It is not to the disadvantage of the later poet that he followed so closely in the footsteps of the earlier. A man of extraordinary genius had appeared in the world; had sung a song of incomparable beauty and power in an environment no longer worthy of him, in a language of narrow range; for many generations the song was virtually lost; then by a miracle of creation, a poet, a twin brother in the spirit to the first, was born, who took up the forgotten poem and sung it anew with all its original melody and force, and all the accumulated refinement of ages of art. [Cheers.] It seems to me idle to ask which was the greater master: each seems greater than his work. The song is like an instrument of precious workmanship and marvelous tone, which is worthless in common hands, but when it falls, at long intervals, into the hands of the supreme master, it yields a melody of transcendent enchantment to all that have ears to hear. If we look at the sphere of influence of the two poets there is no longer any comparison. Omar sang to a half barbarous province; Fitzgerald to the world. Wherever the English speech is spoken or read, the Rubaiyat has taken its place as a classic. There is not a hill post in India, nor a village in England, where there is not a coterie to whom Omar Khayyám is a familiar friend and a bond of union. In America he has an equal following, in many regions and conditions. In the Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric sect; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. Vedder is a center of delight and suggestion wherever it exists. In the cities of the West you will find the Quatrains one of the most thoroughly read books in every Club library. I heard Omar quoted once in one of the most lovely and desolate spots of the high Rockies. We had been camping on the Great Divide, our "roof of the world," where in the space of a few feet you may see two springs, one sending its water to the polar solitudes, the other to the eternal Carib sumOne morning at sunrise as we were breaking camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, a frontiersman born, intoning these words of somber majesty: mer. 'Tis but a tent where takes his one day's rest A Sultan to the realm of death addressed. The Sultan rises and the dark Ferrash Strikes, and prepares it for another guest. I thought that sublime setting of primeval forest and pouring cañon was worthy of the lines; I am sure the dewless, crystalline air never vibrated to strains of more solemn music. Certainly our poet can never be numbered among the great popular writers of all times. He has told no story; he has never unpacked his heart in public; he has never thrown the reins on the neck of the winged horse, and let his imagination carry him where it listed. "Ah! the crowd must have emphatic warrant." Its suffrages are not for the cool, collected observer, whose eye no glitter can ever dazzle, no mist suffuse. The many cannot but resent that air of lofty intelligence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will hold a place forever among that limited number who, like Lucretius and Epicurus-without rage or defiance, even without unbecoming mirth-look deep into the tangled mysteries of things; refuse credence to the absurd, and allegiance to the arrogant authority, sufficiently conscious of fallibility to be tolerant of all opinions; with a faith too wide for doctrine and a benevolence untrammeled by creed, too wise to be wholly poets, and yet too surely poets to be implacably wise. [Loud cheers.] RUTHERFORD B. HAYES NATIONAL SENTIMENTS Speech of Rutherford B. Hayes, President of the United States, at the first annual banquet of the New England Society in the city of Brooklyn, December 21, 1880. The president of the Society, Benjamin D. Silliman, in introducing him, said: "Gentlemen, we are honored this evening by the presence of an illustrious descendant of New England, the Chief Magistrate of the Nation. [Cheers.] He is about to retire from his high position, with the respect, admiration and the gratitude of the people for the great wisdom, the pure purpose, the steady will and the unwavering firmness with which he has administered the government, preserved its honor and secured its property. [Loud cheers.] I propose to you, as our first toast, "The President of the United States.' MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:-We have often heard, we often hear, the phrase "New England ideas." It is said, and I think said truly, that these ideas have a large and growing influence in shaping the affairs of the people of the United States. It is not meant, I suppose, that the principles referred to in this phrase, are peculiar to New England, but merely that in New England they are generally accepted, and that perhaps there they had their first practical illustration. These ideas, these principles generally termed New England ideas, and New England principles, it seems to me, have had much to do with that prosperity which we are now enjoying, and about which we are perhaps apt to be too boastful, but for which it is certain we cannot be too grateful. [Applause.] The subject, New England ideas, is altogether too large a one for me, or anybody, to discuss this evening. If it were to be done at length, in protracted speaking, we have our friends here, able and with a reputation for capacity in that way. Our friend, Mr. Evarts, for example [applause], Mr. Beecher [ap |