The French convention gave the best definition of liberty I have ever read: "The liberty of one citizen ceases only where the liberty of another citizen commences." I know of no better definition. I ask you to-day to make a declaration of individual independence. And if you are independent, be just. Allow everybody else to make his declaration of individual independence. Allow your wife, allow your husband, allow your children to make theirs. It is a grand thing to be the owner of yourself. It is a grand thing to protect the rights of others. It is a sublime thing to be free and just. 395. Free, Honest Thought I am going to say what little I can to make the American people brave enough and generous enough and kind enough to give everybody else the rights they have themselves. Can there ever be any progress in this world to amount to anything until we have liberty? The thoughts of a man who is not free are not worth much--not much. A man who thinks with the club of a creed above his head--a man who thinks casting his eye askance at the flames of hell, is not apt to have very good thoughts. And for my part, I would not care to have any status or social position even in heaven if I had to admit that I never would have been there only I got scared. When we are frightened we do not think very well. If you want to get at the honest thoughts of a man he must free. If he is not free you will not get his honest thought. 396. Ingersoll Prefers Shoemakers to Princes The other day there came shoemakers, potters, workers in wood and iron, from Europe, and they were received in the city of New York as though they had been princes. They had been sent by the great republic of France to examine into the arts and manufactures of the great republic of America. They looked a thousand times better to me than the Edward Alberts and Albert Edwards--the royal vermin, that live on the body politic. And I would think much more of our government if it would fete and feast them, instead of wining and dining the imbeciles of a royal line. 397. Sham Dignity I hate dignity. I never saw a dignified man that was not after all an old idiot Dignity is a mask; a dignified man is afraid that you will know he does not know everything. A man of sense and argument is always willing to admit what he don't know--why?--because there is so much that he does know; and that is the first step towards learning anything--willingness to admit what you don't know, and when you don't understand a thing, ask--no matter how small and silly it may look to other people--ask, and after that you know. A man never is in a state of mind that he can learn until he gets that dignified nonsense out of him. 398. A Good Time Coming!