WOMAN BY CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW MR. PRESIDENT:-I know of no act of my life which justifies your assertion that I am an expert on this question. I can very well understand why it is that the toast to "Woman" should follow the toast to "the Press." [Laughter.] I am called upon to respond to the best, the most suggestive, and the most important sentiment which has been delivered this evening, at this midnight hour, when the varied and ceaseless flow of eloquence has exhausted subjects and audience, when the chairs are mainly vacant, the bottles empty, and the oldest veteran and most valiant Roman of us all scarce dares meet the doom he knows awaits him at home. [Laughter.] Bishop Berkeley, when he wrote his beautiful verses upon our Western World, and penned the line, "Time's noblest offspring is the last," described not so nearly our prophetic future as the last and best creation of the Almighty-womanwhom we both love and worship. [Applause.] We have here the President of the United States and the General of our armies; around these tables is gathered a galaxy of intellect, genius and achievement seldom presented on any occasion, but none of them would merit the applause we so enthusiastically bestow, or have won their high honors, had they not been guided or inspired by the woman they revered or loved. I have noticed one peculiarity about the toasts this evening very remarkable in the New England Society: every one of them is a quotation from Shakespeare. If Elder Brewster and Carver and Cotton Mather, the early divines of Massachusetts, and the whole colony of Plymouth could have been collected together in general assembly, and have seen with prophetic vision the flower of their descendants celebrating the virtues of this ancestry in sentiments every one of which was couched in the language of a playwright, what would they have said? [Laughter.] This imagination can not compass the emotions and the utterances of the occasion. But I can understand why this has been done. It is because the most versatile and distinguished actor upon our municipal stage is the president of the New England Society. [Laughter and applause.] We live in an age when from the highest offices of our city the incumbent seeks the stage to achieve his greatest honors. [Laughter.] I see now our worthy president, Mr. Bailey, industriously thumbing his Shakespeare to select these toasts. He admires the airy grace and flitting beauty of Titania; he weeps over the misfortunes of Desdemona and Ophelia. Each individual hair stands on end as he contemplates the character of Lady Macbeth; but as he spends his night with Juliet, he softly murmurs, "Parting is such sweet sorrow." [Loud laughter.] You know that it is a physiological fact that boys take after their mothers, and reproduce the characteristics and intellectual qualities of the maternal, and not the paternal, side. Standing here in the presence of the most worthy representatives of Plymouth, and knowing, as I do, your moral and mental worth, the places you fill, and the commercial, financial, humane, and catholic impetus you give to our metropolitan life, how can I do otherwise than on bended knee reverence the New England mothers who gave you birth! [Applause.] Your president, in his speech tonight, spoke of himself as a descendant of John Alden. In my judgment, Priscilla uttered the sentiment which gave the Yankee the key-note of success, and condensed the primal elements of his character, when she said to John Alden, "Prythee, why don't you speak for yourself, John?” [Laughter.] That motto has been the spear in the rear and the star in the van of the New Englander's progress. 1 It has made him the most audacious, self-reliant, and irrepressible member of the human family; and for illustration we need look no farther than the present descendant of Priscilla and John Alden. [Laughter and applause.] The only way I can reciprocate your call at this late hour is to keep you here as long as I can. I think I see now the descendant of a Mayflower immortal who has been listening here to the glories of his ancestry, and learning that he is "the heir of all the ages, as puffed and swollen with pride of race and history, he stands solitary and alone upon his doorstep, reflects on his broken promise of an early return, and remembers that within "there is a divinity which shapes his end." [Applause and laughter.] In all ages woman has been the source of all that is pure, unselfish, and heroic in the spirit and life of man. It was for love that Antony lost a world. It was for love that Jacob worked seven long years, and for seven more; and I have often wondered what must have been his emotions when on the morning of the eighth year he awoke and found the homely, scrawny, bony Leah instead of the lovely and beautiful presence of his beloved Rachel. [Laughter.] A distinguished French philosopher answered the narrative of every event with the question, "Who was she?" Helen conquered Troy, plunged all the nations of antiquity into war, and gave that earliest, as it is still the grandest, epic which has come down through all time. Poetry and fiction are based upon woman's love, and the movements of history are mainly due to the sentiments or ambitions she has inspired. Semiramis, Zenobia, Queen Elizabeth, claim a cold and distant admiration; they do not touch the heart. But when Florence Nightingale, or Grace Darling, or Ida Lewis, unselfish and unheralded, peril all to succor and to save, the profoundest and holiest emotions of our nature render them tribute and homage. [Applause.] Mr. President, there is no aspiration which any man here to-night entertains, no achievement he seeks to accomplish, no great and honorable ambition he desires to gratify, which is not directly related to either or both a mother or a wife. [Applause.] From the hearth-stone around which linger the recollections of our mother, from the fireside where our wife awaits us, come all the purity, all the hope, and all the courage with which we fight the battle of life. [Applause.] The man who is not thus inspired, who labors not so much to secure the applause of the world as the solid and more precious approval of his home, accomplishes little of good for others or of honor for himself. I close with the hope that each of us may always have near us, "A perfect woman, nobly planned, To warn, to comfort, and command, AFTER-DINNER SPEECH BY SIR HENRY LYTTON BULWER Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, if it be true, that I have been so fortunate as to contribute in any way to the friendly relations which at present exist between the two countries, it is simply because I have taken a plain, downright course for effecting this subject. The fact of it is, gentlemen, that, according to old customs, when any causes for difference, however slight, existed between our two governments, down sat Her Majesty's representative at his desk, and down sat the United States Secretary of State, and each penned to the other very pith and pertinent dispatches, showing the great motives for grievance there on both sides, and then those dispatches were carefuly circulated throughout both countries, but when there were only causes for mutual goodwill and satisfaction, no one thought it worth while to take notice of so simple a fact, nor to state to the English and American public what strong reasons, both in sentiment and interest, there existed, for their maintaining the closest and most friendly relations with each other. This was the old school of diplomacy, gentlemen; but I am of the new |