I would like to meet the great men who are here to-night.  The great men!  We don’t have any great men in Philadelphia.  Great men!  You say that they all come from London, or San Francisco, or Rome, or Manayunk, or anywhere else but here—­anywhere else but Philadelphia—­and yet, in fact, there are just as great men in Philadelphia as in any city of its size.  There are great men and women in this audience.  Great men, I have said, are very simple men.  Just as many great men here as are to be found anywhere.  The greatest error in judging great men is that we think that they always hold an office.  The world knows nothing of its greatest men.  Who are the great men of the world?  The young man and young woman may well ask the question.  It is not necessary that they should hold an office, and yet that is the popular idea.  That is the idea we teach now in our high schools and common schools, that the great men of the world are those who hold some high office, and unless we change that very soon and do away with that prejudice, we are going to change to an empire.  There is no question about it.  We must teach that men are great only on their intrinsic value, and not on the position that they may incidentally happen to occupy.  And yet, don’t blame the young men saying that they are going to be great when they get into some official position.  I ask this audience again who of you are going to be great?  Says a young man:  “I am going to be great.”  “When are you going to be great?” “When I am elected to some political office.”  Won’t you learn the lesson, young man; that it is prima facie evidence of littleness to hold public office under our form of government?  Think of it.  This is a government of the people, and by the people, and for the people, and not for the office-holder, and if the people in this country rule as they always should rule, an office-holder is only the servant of the people, and the Bible says that “the servant cannot be greater than his master.”  The Bible says that “he that is sent cannot be greater than him who sent him.”  In this country the people are the masters, and the office-holders can never be greater than the people; they should be honest servants of the people, but they are not our greatest men.  Young man, remember that you never heard of a great man holding any political office in this country unless he took that office at an expense to himself.  It is a loss to every great man to take a public office in our country.  Bear this in mind, young man, that you cannot be made great by a political election.

Another young man says, “I am going to be a great man in Philadelphia some time.”  “Is that so?  When are you going to be great?” “When there comes another war!  When we get into difficulty with Mexico, or England, or Russia, or Japan, or with Spain again over Cuba, or with New Jersey, I will march up to the cannon’s mouth, and amid the glistening bayonets I will tear down their flag from its staff, and I will come home with