r whom I have very little respect.
[Applause.] Some men say there is a God; some men say there is no God.
Some of the independents say that the truth lies between them.
[Laughter.] I cannot find it between them. Every man has a God. If you
believe in your God,--he may be another God from mine--if you are a man,
I want you to fight for him, and I may have to fight against you, but do
you fight for the God that you believe in. [Applause.]

I do sincerely think (and I wish that this was a congregation of my
fellow-editors of the whole land, for my heart is in reality full of
this thing)--I do sincerely think that there is something of a danger
that our eloquent, ready, powerful, versatile, indefatigable, vigorous,
omnipresent, omniscient men of the press may drive out of public
life--and they will ridicule that phrase--may drive out of public life,
not all, but a very considerable class of sensitive, high-minded,
honorable, ambitious gentlemen. [Applause.] Now, I do not say anything
about the future for myself. I have got a "free lance," I have got a
newspaper, and I can fight with the rest of them; but I will give you a
bit of my experience in public life. I tell you, my friends of the New
England Society, that one of the sorest things that a man in public life
has to bear is the reckless, unreasonable censure of members of the
press whom individually he respects. [Applause.] That large-hearted man,
whom personally I love, with whom I could shake hands, with whom I did
shake hands, with whom I sat at the social board time and again, grossly
misinterprets my public actions; intimates all manner of dishonorable
things, which I would fight at two paces rather than be guilty of; and
it would be useless for me to write a public letter to explain or
contradict. [Applause.]

Now, I am only one of hundreds. I can stand still and wait the result,
in the confidence that, if not all, yet some, men believe me to be
honorable and true; if they do not, God and I know it, and I would
"fight it out on that line." [Applause.]

Gentlemen, it is rather my habit to talk in earnest. Next to the evil of
having all public men in this land corrupt; next to the evil of having
all our governmental affairs in the hands of men venal and weak and
narrow, debauching public life and carrying it down to destruction, is
the calamity of having all the young men believe it is so, whether it be
so or not. [Applause.] Teach all the boys to believe that eve