country’s magnanimous dealings with Cuba; her teachers schooling Filipinos into nobler life; our President leading the armies of Russia and Japan out of the rivers of blood; slavery gone, lottery gone, polygamy outlawed, the saloon iniquity tottering to its fall; hospitals nestled in shadows of bereavement, hungry children fed on their way to school, and men who know how to make money, giving it away for the relief of suffering and uplift of mankind as never before.  Don’t tell me the world is getting worse.

I was in New York City for two weeks at the time of the Titanic disaster.  On Saturday evening before the ocean tragedy I stood on the elevated at the corner of Thirty-third and Broadway.  The “Great White Way” was thronged with pleasure-seekers, crowding their way to theatres and picture shows.  It seemed to me I never saw the great city so gay.  But, on Monday morning after, there came on ether waves the appalling news that the finest ship in the world had gone down, and sixteen hundred human beings had gone with it.  I never witnessed such a transformation.  It seemed to me every woman had tears in her eyes, and every man a lump in his throat.  Actors played to empty houses that evening; a pall hung over the great Metropolis.  But when details came, with them came the triumph of humanity.  The rich had died for the poor, the strong had died for the weak.

John Jacob Astor had turned away from his fine mansion on Fifth Avenue, his summer home at Newport, his hundred millions of dollars in wealth, and was found spending his last moments saving women and children.  All honor to the brave young bridegroom who carried his bride to a life boat, said, “good-bye sweetheart,” kissed her and stepping back went down with the ship.  All hail to that loyal loving Hebrew wife and mother, Mrs. Straus, who holding to her husband’s arm said:  “I would rather die with you than live without you.”  Like Ruth of old, she said:  “Where thou goest, I will go; where thou diest I will die, and there will I be buried.”  There side by side at the ocean gateway to eternity these old lovers went down together.

Ah! this republic will never perish while we have such manhood and womanhood to live and die for its honor.

It has been said:  “We live in a materialistic age; that all human activities are born of selfishness; that manhood is dying out of the world.”  All over the land at midnight, men lean from the saddles of iron horses, peering down the railroad track, ready to die if need be for the safety of those entrusted to their care.  Firemen will climb ladders tonight and their souls will go up in flames, like Jim Bludsoe’s, to save the lives of imperiled women and children.

Look at the orchestra on board the Titanic.  When the supreme moment of danger came, they rushed to the deck, not to put on life belts, not to get into lifeboats but to form in order, and send out over the icy ocean, the music of the sweet song, “Nearer, my God, to Thee.”  When the ship lifted at one end and started on its headlong dive of twenty-seven hundred fathoms to the depths of the salty sea, those brave men, without a discordant note, sent out the sweet refrain;