Peter Cooper

([New York] :  The Alumni Association of the Cooper Union,  [c1891])

Tools


 

Jump to page:

Table of Contents

  Page 35  



none the less sincere, in that they come from a heart in which
the pulsations of eighty-three years have not enfeebled the
appreciation of deeds of generosity and kindness.

When the suggestion of the honor which you designed for
me was communicated to me, I confess I was reluctant to
accede to your wishes, because my acceptance seemed to
imply a consciousness, on my part, of desert, which I did not
feel; and my reluctance was only overcome by the assurance
that the recognition which you desired to make of my life-long
desire to do iny duty to ih.6 city of my birth, and to my fellow-
men, might be useful in helping others, and especially the
youn?-. to (io their duty in a community in which so much
aepends upon the vohmtary actions of ito Individual members.

If, then, I have done or accomplished anything, which
really merits your good opinion, let me say at once, and for all,
that I have found and received full compensation in the satisfac¬
tion which I have derived from the consciousness of duty
performed; and that the experience of a long life enables me to
say that money and efforts expended for the general good are
a better paying investment than any possible expenditure for
personal gratification. In looking back, however, over my
life, i am compelled to make a remark, in which most aged
persons wiii sympathir^e, and th'^^ i« ^ow much I have seen
come to pass, and how little I have been able to do in a long
career, that cardinal rule which has been to render some
equivalent to society, in some useful forn
day of my existence.
 

.f 1^-u^.
 

or f^c
 

«-i-
 

I'.Icfctsured by the achievements of the years I have seen,
i am one of the oldest men who have ever lived; but I do not
feel old, and I propose to give the recipe by which I have pre¬
served my youth. I have always given a friendly welcome to
new ideas, and I have endeavored not to feel too old to learn—
and, thus, though I stand here with the snows of so many
winters upon my head, my faith in hum^an nature, my belief in
the progress of man to a better social conditon, and especially
my trust in the ability of men to establish and maintain self
government, are as fresh and as young as when I began to
travel the path of life.

While I have always recognized that the object of business-
is to make money in an honorable manner, I have endeavored
to remember that the object of life is to do good. Hence I
have been ready to engage in all new enterprises, and, without
incurring debt, to risk the means which I had acquired in their
promotion, provided they seemed to me calculated to advance
the general good. This will account for my early attempt to
perfect the steam engine, for my attempt to construct the first
American locomotive^for my connection with the telegraph in
a course of efforts to unite our country with the European
world, and for my recent efforts to solve the problem of
economical steam navagation on the canals ; to all of which
 

35
  Page 35