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it is destined to prove a lesson to the people, and principally to the young generation, which has to learn, that a man who has no riches, no longer a political place, no trust to sustain him, no newspaper to do his bidding, no machine to grind out his orders, can still be, or rather is, for that very reason, uppermost in the admiration and reverence of the best men of the nation; [cheers and applause;] feared, it is true, by many; loved by many more, both for his own sake and for the enemies he had to make, and respected by all.
The toast, Mr. Chairman, called for the consideration of “The storm and stress period of young Germany,” and, I take it, particularly of the life of Mr. Schurz. There is such a period in the life of every people. As we had our storm and stress in the Revolution and in the antislavery movement, so the last absolutely spontaneous storm and stress of Germany was the revolution of 1848. Is there such a period in Carl Schurz's life? Either there was no such period, or it lasted all his life, for that life has been spent in fearless and incessant combat on the battlefield, the platform, in the council of the nation, in literature, always in the interests of his ideals, to this very day of his triumphant recognition. [Applause.]
There is surely a peculiar harmony in the life work of this man. In adolescence the compass of his life was set in one direction; no magnet was ever powerful enough to cause a deviation. A clear brain, a warm heart, the knowledge of his duty, the appreciation of what was right, the unselfishness which sacrifices one's all to the commonwealth, the incorruptibility by what would be a temptation to any but the godlike amongst
