when I get through;then Tad and I are going out to Springfield,Illinois.I have bought a farm out there and I don't care if I again earn only twenty-five cents a day.Tad has a mule team,and we are going to plant onions."
Then he asked me,"Were you brought up on a farm?"I said,"Yes;in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts."He then threw his leg over the corner of the big chair and said,"I have heard many a time,ever since I was young,that up there in those hills you have to sharpen the noses of the sheep in order to get down to the grass between the rocks."He was so familiar,so everyday,so farmer-like,that I felt right at home with him at once.
He then took hold of another roll of paper,and looked up at me and said,"Good morning."I took the hint then and got up and went out.After I had gotten out I could not realize I had seen the President of the United States at all.But a few days later,when still in the city,I saw the crowd pass through the East Room by the coffin of Abraham Lincoln,and when I looked at the upturned face of the murdered President I felt then that the man I had seen such a short time before,who,so ****** a man,so plain a man,was one of the greatest men that God ever raised up to lead a nation on to ultimate liberty.Yet he was only"Old Abe"to his neighbors.When they had the second funeral,I was invited among others,and went out to see that same coffin put back in the tomb at Springfield.Around the tomb stood Lincoln's old neighbors,to whom he was just"Old Abe."Of course that is all they would say.
Did you ever see a man who struts around altogether too large to notice an ordinary working mechanic?Do you think he is great?He is nothing but a puffed-up balloon,held down by his big feet.There is no greatness there.
Who are the great men and women?My attention was called the other day to the history of a very little thing that made the fortune of a very poor man.It was an awful thing,and yet because of that experience he-—not a great inventor or genius-—invented the pin that now is called the safety-pin,and out of that safety-pin made the fortune of one of the great aristocratic families of this nation.
A poor man in Massachusetts who had worked in the nail-works was injured at thirty-eight,and he could earn but little money.He was employed in the office to rub out the marks on the bills made by pencil memorandums,and he used a rubber until his hand grew tired.He then tied a piece of rubber on the end of a stick and worked it like a plane.His little girl came and said,"Why,you have a patent,haven't you?"The father said afterward,"My daughter told me when I took that stick and put the rubber on the end that there was a patent,and that was the first thoughtof that."He went to Boston and applied for his patent,and every one of you that has a rubber-tipped pencil in your pocket is now paying tribute to the millionaire.No capital,not a penny did he invest in it.All was income,all the way up into the millions.
But let me hasten to one other greater thought."Show me the great men and women who live in Philadelphia."A gentleman over there will get up and say："We don't have any great men in Philadelphia.They don't live here.They live away off in Rome or St.Petersburg or London or Manayunk,or anywhere else but here in our town."I have come now to the apex of my thought.I have come now to the heart of the whole matter and to the center of my struggle：Why isn't Philadelphia a greater city in its greater wealth?Why does New York excel Philadelphia?People say,"Because of her harbor."Why do many other cities of the United States get ahead of Philadelphia now?There is only one answer,and that is because our own people talk down their own city.If there ever was a community on earth that has to be forced ahead,it is the city of Philadelphia.If we are to have a boulevard,talk it down;if we are going to have better schools,talk them down;if you wish to have wise legislation,talk it down;talk all the proposed improvements down.That is the only great wrong that I can lay at the feet of the magnificentPhiladelphia that has been so universally kind to me.I say it is time we turn around in our city and begin to talk up the things that are in our city,and begin to set them before the world as the people of Chicago,New York,St.Louis,and San Francisco do.Oh,if we only could get that spirit out among our people,that we can do things in Philadelphia and do them well!
Arise,ye millions of Philadelphians,trust in God and man,and believe in the great opportunities that are right here not over in New York or Boston,but here-—for business,for everything that is worth living for on earth.There was never an opportunity greater.Let us talk up our own city.
But there are two other young men here tonight,and that is all I will venture to say,because it is too late.One over there gets up and says,"There is going to be a great man in Philadelphia,but never was one.""Oh,is that so?When are you going to be great?""When I am elected to some political office."Young man,won't you learn a lesson in the primer of politics that it is a prima facie evidence of littleness to hold office under our form of government?Great men get into office sometimes,but what this country needs is men that will do what we tell them to do.This nation-—where the people rule-—is governed by the people,for the people,and so long as it is,then the office-holder is but the servant of thepeople,and the Bible says the servant cannot be greater than the master.The Bible says,"He that is sent cannot be greater than Him who sent Him."The people rule,or should rule,and if they do,we do not need the greater men in office.If the great men in America took our offices,we would change to an empire in the next ten years.——
