The Good Fortune of Benjamin Harrison

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

I MUST introduce myself to the Club as an insatiable reader of obituaries. I cannot recall the time when I was not something of a connoisseur in epitaphs. Though I cannot claim the distinction of a genuinely melancholy temperament, I confess that when I open a newspaper I look first, indeed, — but this is mere habit, — at the baseball games, then at the death notices, and only thereafter do I settle down to the normal digestion of the news of the day. I am a lover of funeral oratory, — at least when I can read it over a quiet pipe; for I do not greatly like to listen to its delivery. My edition of Bossuet is well thumbed, and I have just filed away for a third reading the noble eulogy recently pronounced by Senator Lodge upon Governor Roger Wolcott of Massachusetts.

With such a passion for noting the judgment of the world upon those who have lately left it, I have naturally read every available comment upon the career of Benjamin Harrison. The American newspaper allows itself to speak frankly of the eminent dead, however it may occasionally take counsels of policy in speaking of the living. The character of the former President has been freely discussed in every quarter of the country, but I have noted scarcely an exception to the general heartiness of praise, to the widespread acknowledgment of his high character and patriotic spirit. Fortunate in many things, Benjamin Harrison was supremely fortunate in winning the kindly and true word of eulogy when he passed away from us.

And yet it is curious that it should have been so. He was not a man of “ magnetic ” temperament. To most observers he seemed rather cold. His mental equipment was that of the logician. During most of his political life he was a partisan of the stricter sort, and often an ungenerous partisan. He was respected, even by his opponents, but was never really popular outside of his own state. He was the sort of political leader who is trusted, but not toasted. After relinquishing his high office he went back to hard work in his profession. He shunned notoriety. His public appearances were rare, although his felicity and dignity as a speaker made them memorable. It was a worthy record, out of the presidency as in it, but it does not seem to account entirely for the universal sense of loss in his death.

How much of that sense of loss was due to our instinctive recognition of the value of independent political opinion ? In the last year of his life, Mr. Harrison, as everybody knows, differed fundamentally from his party upon certain momentous questions. In his Ann Arbor address and in his papers in the North American Review he gave forcible expression to his convictions. A few party newspapers declared that he “ lacked tact,” that he had “ made a mistake.” But the country at large, whether it agreed with him or not, was very much interested. It liked his courage. Furthermore, he showed unexpected wit and urbanity and good temper in asserting the rights of weak nations like the Boers, and the obligations of strong nations like our own. He knew that he stood, at least temporarily, in a minority, but instead of growing cynical and despairing on that account, he led the forlorn hope with imperturbable good nature.

Was it for such reasons that Mr. Harrison’s influence was growing, to the very moment of his death ? We Americans like the winner, and are quick enough to range ourselves upon the winning side, but we admire a cheerful loser, too. Benjamin Harrison had that sturdy old - fashioned American disposition which takes fortune’s buffets and rewards with equal thanks, is not very prompt to discover when it is beaten, and in victory or defeat never takes itself so seriously as it does the good cause. Everybody seemed to recognize, at the hour of Mr. Harrison’s passing, that here was a man of the fine old type ; and this universal recognition of excellence is at once the great good fortune of the statesman who is gone, and the best evidence of the fundamental soundness of American public opinion.