his palace, and looking around him said in his pride, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the honor of the kingdom and for the honor of my majesty?" that the voice came to him, even while the words were in the king's mouth (saith the chronicle), "Thy kingdom is departed from thee." It was when Belshazzar sat feasting in his Babylonian palace, with his lords and ladies, eating and drinking out of the golden vessels that had been sacred to the Lord, that the writing came upon the wall, "Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting." Not only in the palace, but all through the great city there was feasting and dancing. Why should they not feast and why should they not dance? They were secure, with walls that were 350 feet high, eighty-five feet thick, with a hundred brazen gates, the city filled with greater wealth than had ever been brought before within walls. But out in the country a few hardy mountaineers had been digging ditches for some time. Nobody took much account of them, yet even that night, in the midst of Belshazzar's luxury and feasting, the veteran troops of Cyrus were marching silently under the dripping walls, down the bed of the lowered Euphrates, so that that which had been the very passageway of Babylon's wealth became the pathway of her ruin.

Unless we preserve the character and the institutions our fathers gave us we will go down as other nations have gone. We may talk and theorize as much as we please, but this is the law of nature-the stronger pushes the weaker to the wall and takes its place.

In the history of civilization first one nation rises and becomes the torch-bearer, and then another takes the torch as it becomes stronger, the stronger always pushing the weaker aside and becoming in its turn the leader. So it has been with the Assyrian, and Babylonian, and Median, and, coming on down, with the Greek, the Roman, the Frank, and then came that great race, the Anglo-SaxonTeutonic race, which seems to me to-day to be the great torch-bearer for this and for the next coming time. Each nation that has borne the torch of civilization has followed some path peculiarly its own. Greek, Roman, Frank, all had and progress directed under

Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, their ideal of power-order Supreme authority, main

tained by armed organization. We bear the torch of civilization because we possess the principles of civil liberty, and we have the character, or should have the character, which our fathers have transmitted to us with which to uphold it. If we have it not, then be sure that with the certainty of a law of nature some nation-it may be one or it may be another-it may be Grecian or it may be Slav, already knocking at our doors, will push us from the way, and take the torch and bear it onward, and we shall go down.

But I have no fear of the future. I think, looking around upon the country at present, that even if it would seem to us at times that there are gravest perils which confront us, that even though there may be evidence of weakening in our character, notwithstanding this I say, I believe the great Anglo-Saxon race, not only on the other side of the water, but on this side of the water-and when I say the Anglo-Saxon race I mean the great white, Englishspeaking race-I use the other term because there is none more satisfactory to me-contains elements which alone. can continue to be the leaders of civilization, the elements of fundamental power, abiding virtue, public and private. Wealth will not preserve a state; it must be the aggregation of individual integrity in its members, in its citizens, that shall preserve it. That integrity, I believe, exists, deep-rooted among our people. Sometimes when I read accounts of vice here and there eating into the heart of the people, I feel inclined to be pessimistic; but when I come face to face with the American and see him in his life, as he truly is; when I reflect on the great body of our people that stretch from one side of this country to the other, their homes perched on every hill and nestled in every valley, and recognize the sterling virtue and the kind of character that sustains it, built on the rock of those principles that our fathers transmitted to us, my pessimism. disappears and I know that not only for this immediate time but for many long generations to come, with that reservoir of virtue to draw from, we shall sustain and carry both ourselves and the whole human race forward.

There are many problems that confront us which we can only solve by the exercise of our utmost courage and wisdom. I do not want anything I say here this evening to

have in the least degree the complexion of a political talk. I am like a friend of mine down in Virginia who told me that he never could talk politics with a man, "Because," he says, "I am that sort of a blanked fool that thinks if a man disagrees with him in politics he has insulted him." Consequently, I am not discussing this matter in any political sense whatever. But I feel quite sure, though I see many men whose opinion I respect who disagree with me, that yet this great people of ours is strong enough to carry through any obligations whatever which they may take up. I have no fear, however it may cause trouble, or may create difference and complication, of our extending our flag in the way we have done of late. I know that I differ with a very considerable section of the people of the South from whom I come, but I have no question whatever that we possess the strength to maintain any obligation that we assume, and I feel sure that in the coming years this great race of ours will have shown strength and resolution enough not only to preserve itself, to preserve the great heritage our fathers have given us of civil liberty here, but also to carry it to the isles of the sea, and, if necessary, to the nations beyond the sea. Of one thing I am very sure, that had our fathers been called on to solve this problem they would have solved it, not in the light of a hundred years ago, but in that of the present.

Among the problems that confront us we have one great problem, already alluded to indirectly to-night. You do not have it here in the North as we have it with us in the South, and yet, I think, it is a problem that vitally concerns you too. There is no problem that can greatly affect one section of this country that does not affect the other. As I came into your city to-night I saw your great structure across the river here, binding the two great cities together and making them one, and I remember that as I came the last time into your beautiful bay down yonder, I saw what seemed to be a mere web of gossamer, a bare hand's breadth along the horizon. It seemed as if I might have swept it away with my hand if I could have reached it, so airy and light it was in the distance, but when I came close to it to-night I found that it was one of the greatest structures that human intellect has ever devised. I saw

it thrilling and vibrating with every energy of our pulsating, modern life. At a distance it looked as if the vessels nearest would strike it, full head, and carry it away. When I reached it I saw that it was so high, so vast, that the traffic of your great stream passed easily backward and forward under it. So it is with some of these problems. They may appear very small to you, ladies and gentlemen, or to us, when seen at a distance-as though merely a handsweep would get rid of them; but I tell you they are too vast to be moved easily.

It

There is one that with us overshadows all the rest. The great Anglo-Saxon race in the section of this country containing the inhabitants of the South understands better than you do the gravity of that great problem which confronts them. It is "like the pestilence that walketh in darkness, the destruction that wasteth at noonday." confronts us all the day; it is the spectre that ever sits beside our bed. No doubt we make mistakes about it; no doubt there are outbreaks growing out of some phases of it that astound, and shock, and stun you, as they do ourselves. But believe me, the Anglo-Saxon race has set itself, with all its power, to face it and to overcome it; to solve it in some way, and in the wisest way. Have patience and it will be solved. Time is the great solver, and time alone. If you knew the problem as I do, my words would have more weight with you than they have. I cannot, perhaps, expect you even to understand entirely what I am saying to you, but when I tell you that it is the greatest problem that at present faces the South, as it has done for the last thirty years, I am saying it to you as an American -one of yourselves, who wants to get at the right, and get at the truth, and who will get on his knees and thank God for anyone who will tell him how to solve the problem and meet the dangers that are therein.

Those dangers are not only for us, they are for you. The key to it, in our opinion, is that to which I alluded but just now; that for the present, at least, the white race is the torch-bearer of civilization, not only for itself, but for the world. There is only one thing that I can say assuredly, and that is that never again will that element of the white race, the white people of the South, any more than you

of the North, consent to be dominated by any weaker race whatsoever. And on this depends your salvation, no less than ours. Some of you may remember that once, during that great siege of Petersburg, which resulted, in the beginning of April, 1865, in the capture of the city and the overthrow of the Confederacy, there was an attempt made to mine the hitherto impregnable lines of General Lee. Finally, one cold morning, the mine was sprung, and a space perhaps double the length of one of your squares was blown up, carrying everything adjacent into the air and making a breach in the lines. Beside a little stream under the hill in the Union lines was massed a large force, a section of which, in front, was composed of negroes. They were hurried forward to rush the breach that had been created. They were wild with the ardor of battle. As it happened, a part of the gray line which had held the adjacent trenches, knowing the peril, had thrown themselves, in the dim dawn of the morning, across the newly made breach, and when they found the colored troops rushing in they nerved themselves anew to the contest. I may say to you calmly, after thirty odd years of experience with the negro race, that it was well for the town of Petersburg that morning that that attempt to carry the lines failed. That thin gray line there in the gray dawn set themselves to meet the on-rushing columns and hold them till knowledge of the attack spread and succor arrived. You may not agree with me that what happened at that time is happening now; but I tell you as one who has stood on the line, that we are not only holding it for ourselves, but for you. It is the white people of the South that are standing to-day between you and the dread problem that now confronts us. They are the thin line of Anglo-Saxons who are holding the broken breach with all their might till succor comes. And I believe the light will come, the day will break and you yourselves stand shoulder to shoulder with us, and then with this united, great American people we can face not only the colored race at the South, but we can face all other races of the world. That is what I look for and pray for, and there are many millions of people who are doing the same to-night.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am not speaking in any spirit