12/27/2022 0 Comments The pilgrimsTrying to make out that this most natural and In your ancestors, gifts which they did not exercise, but only transmitted. You have no shadow of right to be celebrating, If it had been you, gentlemen, you probably wouldn't have landed, but It would have been a case of monumental leatherheadedness which the world would Landed there would be some reason for celebrating Shouldn't they come ashore? If they hadn't Those Pilgrims had been at sea three or four Was there remarkable about it, I would like to The other was tissue, tinfoil, fish-bladder, but this Was thin enough, but this is thinner than ever You are not celebrating the Pilgrims themselves,īut the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Pardon: the gentleman at my left assures me that What do you want to celebrate them for? Your To celebrate those people for? - those ancestors of yours of 1620 - the Mayflower tribe, I I have kept still for years,īut really I think there is no sufficient justification for this sort of thing. Twain has made his brilliant and permanent ascent. Leave it, and it is among and above them that Mr. To ascend there in anything that's reasonable is difficult,įor - confidentially, with the door shut - we all know that they are theīrightest, ablest sons of that goodly land who never More than this, andīetter even, in cheerful, hopeful, helpful literature he Has done the best he could - he has had all his childrenīorn there, and has made of himself a New EnglandĪncestor. Under the painful circumstances in which he has found himself, Never exactly born in New England, nor, perhaps, wereĪny of his ancestors. "This sentiment has been assigned to one who was PLYMOUTH ROCK AND THE PILGRIMS ADDRESS AT THE FIRST ANNUAL DINNER, N. When they stopped laughing, would the sons of the Puritans in his audience have felt the need to do anything else about the pattern of injustice MT articulates? As humor, this "protest" shocked and entertained its audience - at the same time. But he does so always as a comedic performance. He re-views American history in a way that profoundly anticipates the revisionist historicism of our times. MT gave his speech last, after a number of other toasts to New England and the "sons" who had gathered to pay homage to the legacy of the "fathers." MT's speech was the only one to notice all the other native sons and daughters who had been excluded from the Society's version of America: native Americans, slaves, women and other "Others." As with Huck Finn's voice, MT here chooses to occupy and speak from a place at the denigrated margins of society. This was a major theme of the keynote address at this dinner, as you can see by reading the account of the banquet from the Philadelphia Press. While the many speakers at these annual dinners paid homage to the Pilgrim Fathers, their filio-piety also nurtured their self-righteous belief that the descendants of such fathers were the "true" America, the legitimate heirs to the nation's places of privilege, the guardians of American culture across the dislocations of space and time. The various New England Societies scattered across the country (there was even one in Charleston) met on the anniversary of the arrival of an immigrant group - the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock - yet one of the forces behind the spread of these Societies throughout the nineteenth century was a reactionary resistance to the recurring waves of immigration from non-Anglo-Saxon ethnic groups. It was delivered at the first annual dinner of Philadelphia's New England Society (the same kind of occasion as his 1882 toast "To Woman," although New York's New England Society was 77 years older). To me this speech, besides being my favorite, is the best performance to look at to see what MT could and couldn't achieve morally as a humorist. Plymouth Rock & the Pilgrims "I rise to protest"
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