98 POLITICAL LIFE-III 



are lending their money and trying to induce others to 

 lend it for the strengthening of human slavery? Madam, 

 none but a converted Jew would do that." 



On the Fourth of July of that summer, Consul-General 

 Murphy always devising new means of upholding the 

 flag of his country summoned Americans from every 

 part of Europe to celebrate the anniversary of our Na- 

 tional Independence at Heidelberg, and at the dinner given 

 at the Hotel Schreider seventy-four guests assembled, in- 

 cluding two or three professors from the university, as 

 against six guests from the Confederate States, who had 

 held a celebration in the morning at the castle. Mr. Mur- 

 phy presided and made a speech which warmed the hearts 

 of us all. It was a thorough-going, old-fashioned, Western 

 Fourth of July oration. I had jeered at Fourth of July 

 orations all my life, but there was something in this one 

 which showed me that these discourses, so often ridiculed, 

 are not without their uses. Certain it is that as the consul- 

 general repeated the phrases which had more than once 

 rung through the Western clearings, in honor of the de- 

 fenders of our country, the divine inspiration of the Con- 

 stitution, our invincibility in war and onr superiority in 

 peace, all of us were encouraged and cheered most lustily. 

 Pleasing was it to note various British tourists standing 

 at the windows listening to the scream of the American 

 eagle and evidently wondering what it all meant. 



Others of us spoke, and especially Dr. McClintock, one 

 of the foremost thinkers, scholars, and patriots that the 

 Methodist Episcopal church has ever produced. His 

 speech was in a very serious vein, and well it might be. In 

 the course of it he said: "According to the last accounts 

 General Lee and his forces are near the town where I live, 

 and are marching directly toward it. It is absolutely cer- 

 tain that, if they reach it, they will burn my house and all 

 that it contains, but I have no fear ; I believe that the Al- 

 mighty is with us in this struggle, and though we may suf- 

 fer much before its close, the Union is to endure and slav- 

 ery is to go down before the forces of freedom." These 



