D. B. ST. JOHN ROOSA

THE SALT OF THE EARTH

     [Speech of Dr. D. B. St. John Roosa, as President of the Holland
     Society of New York, at the eleventh annual dinner of the Society,
     New York City, January 15, 1896.]

GENTLEMEN, MEMBERS OF THE HOLLAND SOCIETY, AND OUR HONORED GUESTS:—­My first duty is to welcome to our Board the representatives of the various societies who honor us by their presence:  St. George’s, St. Nicholas, New England, St. Andrew’s, Colonial Order, and Colonial Wars, Southern Society, the Holland Society welcomes you most heartily.  I ought to say that the Holland Society, as at present constituted, could run a Police Board [applause], furnish the Mayors for two cities, and judges to order, to decide on any kind of a case.  As a matter of fact, when they get hard up down-town for a judge, they just send up to the man who happens to be President of the Holland Society and say “Now we want a judge,” and we send Van Hoesen, Beekman, Truax, or Van Wyck. [Applause.] They are all right.  They are Dutch, and they will do. [Laughter.] All the people say it does not make any difference about their politics, so long as the blood is right.

Now, gentlemen, seriously, I thank you very sincerely for the honor which you have conferred upon me—­and which I was not able, on account of circumstances entirely beyond my control, to acknowledge at the annual meeting of the Society—­in making me your President.  I do not think there is any honor in the world that compares with it, and if you think over the names of the Presidents of this Society you may imagine that a doctor, especially knowing what the Dutch in South Africa think of doctors just now [laughter and applause], would have a mighty slim chance to come in against a Van Vorst, a Roosevelt, a Van Hoesen, a Beekman, a Van Wyck, or a Van Norden.  But my name is not Jameson. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, there seems to be an impression that the Holland Society, because it does not have a Club-house—­and it may have a Club-house, that remains for you to decide; and because it does not have a great many other things, has no reason for its existence.  But, gentlemen, there is one sufficient reason for the existence of the Hollanders in a Society.  We have eight hundred and forty members, and each one of us has a function—­to teach our neighboring Yankees just exactly what we are, whence we came, and where we mean to go. [Laughter and applause.] The colossal ignorance of the ordinary New Englander [laughter and applause]—­I mean in regard to the Dutch [laughter]—­is something that I would delineate were it not for the presence of the President of the Mayflower Society. [Renewed laughter.] Why, it was only the other night that at one of these entertainments when I was representing you and doing the best I could with my medal and my ribbon, that a friend came up to me and said:  “You belong to the Holland