[Laughter and applause.] But it is a very great thing that His Excellency Mr. Bryce has consented, in his gracious good humor, to give us the last night of his stay in America, as I might call it, and say his last farewell word to the people of America from the dining table of The Pilgrims, just as he said his first word when he landed on our shores more than six years ago. [Applause.]

This is not the first time that I have said good-by to Mr. Bryce, but this is positively his last appearance on any American stage. [Laughter.] Over and over again I have said it. But those were only dress-rehearsals. At the Century Club, at the New York Lawyers' Association, at the Genealogical Society, among all the assembled clerical world of America-but every time till now it was all only a rehearsal. This, however, is the real thing. "If you have tears prepare to shed them now." Some people laugh at The Pilgrims; they say we are only a sentimental body-amounting really to nothing; and that we have no real beginning or end. But these sentiments, of which some men are disposed to speak so lightly, especially if they are moral sentiments, sometimes grow and harden into fixed convictions and into that public opinion which, as Mr. Bryce has taught us, governs the world.

We have had one or two instances of this in our own history. Only in 1835 a citizen of Boston, who afterwards became one of the most celebrated citizens of the world, William Lloyd Garrison, was dragged through its streets with a rope around his body because he had just published the first number of the Liberator, which declared for the immediate liberation of the slaves. That was pure sentiment on his part. It was the worst kind of sentiment on the part of the people of Boston. But in 1863, in less than thirty years after that disgraceful spectacle, Lincoln signed the Proclamation of Emancipation of all the slaves, and Garrison lived to see his dream, his sentiment, realized and the whole object of his life accomplished. [Applause.] So it was with the slave trade. I have forgotten the year when Wilberforce made his great speech in the House of Commons, up to which time a great part of England, and all of America, I might say, approved the slave trade. It was embodied in our Constitution which our honored fathers made

that the slave trade should not be interfered with until 1808. But in less than fifty years from the time when Wilberforce spoke, the slave trade was prohibited by almost every civilized country. Great Britain and the United States entered into the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 which put an end to the last war between them, by which they agreed that each should do all in its power to put an end to that horrible traffic, and again in 1842 by the Ashburton Treaty they agreed to fit out a joint squadron, consisting of an equal number of armed vessels belonging to each to pursue the slave traders and put an end to that horrible relic of barbarism. So there was another instance of mere sentiment-moral sentiment-growing into universal public opinion and compelling justice to be done. Well, nobody thought any harm in 1842 in a squadron of the English navy and a squadron of the American navy standing side by side out in the ocean to put an end to that unspeakable inhumanity; and some of us, I think, may live to see the representatives of the same navies standing side by side to put an end to some other great wrong. [Great applause.] Thus then, of our sentiments, for which they deride us. And what is the sentiment on which The Pilgrims are founded?

Why, it is that the English-speaking race is one, that there never must be any quarrel, any bad faith, between those two great nations whose union for peace will secure the peace of the world. [Cries of "Hear, hear," and great applause.] It is another case of sentiment growing and waxing into public opinion which governs all mankind.

The abolition of unjust war is no more improbable to-day than the abolition of slavery or the abolition of the slave trade was at the date when those reforms were taken in hand. And, for one, I hope we shall never hesitate to work together for the good of mankind and to secure the common peace of all nations. [Renewed applause.] And I do not believe that the people of the United States are ever going to permit, at any rate, for any length of time permit, any action on the part of government, or president, or senate, that will tend to break the peace between Great Britain and the United States. [Vociferous applause.]

Now, Mr. Bryce, I have been putting off as far as I could

what little I had to say in the way of good-by for fear I could not control myself. You and I were friends long before I went to England in 1899. You were among the first to greet me when I arrived there as a representative of the United States. All the years that I was there you and Mrs. Bryce were among our dearest and nearest friends, and, then, our tenure of office was almost identical-six years and three months; and in that six years and three months that you and Mrs. Bryce have been here that friendship has been renewed and continued and grown stronger and stronger. I believe, gentlemen, that Mr. Bryce has been a very great benefactor of the American people as well as of his own country. [Applause.] He has been a teacher of our youth, and many of you at this table are young enough to know how you learned from his books so much that was exalting and ennobling, and especially from his book on "The American Commonwealth"-how much you learned there that you could never have got from any other source. To the youth of this country he has been a constant living lesson. I believe we have got a university here for about every day in the year, and that Mr. Bryce has visited every one of them. He has lifted up the hearts and souls of those boys and young men all over the country, and all he has got for it is the satisfaction of doing a vast deal of good and carrying away some highly colored hoods and gowns, which he will carry home as trophies and they are so numerous and so highly colored that Joseph's coat of many colors could not begin to compare with them. [Laughter.]

Mr. Bryce, we are terribly sorry to lose you. England has sent other ambassadors, she will send many other ambassadors, but there is and will be only one Bryce in the whole list. [Applause.] You have made the American people from the Atlantic to the Pacific love you, and not only that, but they know you. They do not need this photograph that is so beautifully illuminated here on our menu to-night to introduce you. You cannot go into any city, town or village without being recognized at once. They all know that is Mr. Bryce, the British Ambassador, and they have learned to love you and to honor you; and all through this land on Wednesday, when you sail away from San Francisco for the Antipodes, every American

heart will be weeping with sorrow, sorry indeed that we are losing you. You are not going straight home to Great Britain, because you might come in conflict with our friend, Mr. Page, you might cross lines, you might strike the same iceberg; you are going around by way of China and Japan, and when you have made that circuit, so great a traveler have you been, that you will have visited all the sections of the habitable globe and may well exclaim then-"Creation's heir; the world, the world is mine."

Ladies and gentlemen, when Mr. Bryce gets back to England he will be the one person of whom all Americans will inquire immediately on arrival. [Applause.]

He will be a perpetual and lifelong memory. Since I have been back from England many Englishmen have come to see me and I have asked "Who is there you want to see?" And one of them would say one man, and another another, and another another, and another another; but from now on as long as you are on the footstool the first man they will inquire about on arriving in England is James Bryce, who was Ambassador to the United States. [Applause.]

Now, gentlemen, this is a peculiar dinner; we are to have only two speeches. What a sense of relief I see coming over so many faces! One of them you have had already, and I am to have the honor of presenting to you the one man whom you have come here to-night to honor, and after him, for a few minutes, the very distinguished gentleman on my left who is going for the next four years to represent us at the Court of Saint James. [Applause.] Now, Mr. Bryce, you have your opportunity; you want to tell these men how much you love them, these women how much you love them; and I can only say on the part of both that it is reciprocated mutually, cordially and most heartily. [Applause.]

Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor of presenting to you His Excellency the Honorable James Bryce, British Ambassador. [Tremendous applause, cheers and music; the assembled company rising and singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."]

CHAMP CLARK

NATIONAL GROWTH

This speech was given by Champ Clark (born 1850, died 1921) at the twenty-sixth annual dinner of the New York Southern Society held in the grand ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria, on Saturday evening, December 16, 1911. The toastmaster in introducing the speaker said: "It would be supererogation if I should undertake to enter upon any eulogy of the gentlemen who are to speak here to-night. Their achievements, gentlemen, speak for themselves. I have therefore, only to present to you-and the highest eulogy I can give him is to introduce him as Speaker of the House of Representatives-the Honorable Champ Clark, of Missouri." Mr. Clark's speech, "On the Annexation of Hawaii," is given in Volume XI, and his introduction "Wit, Humor and Anecdote," in Volume XIV.

You came very near missing this part of this performance. This is the first time in the memory of the oldest inhabitant that the House of Representatives was in session every day for the first twelve days of a long session. It was still in session when I left there to-day. That shows that that House means business.

I suppose that political subjects are barred here—

THE TOASTMASTER: Not at all.

Well, you see, it is entirely too late to announce that now, because I have already fixed up a non-political speech.

A country's growth is the growth of all its parts, and every American worthy of the name, rejoices in the growth of his country in strength, intelligence, wealth, usefulness and honor, and he therefore rejoices in the growth of every particular part of it. North Dakota is interested in the size of the cotton crop, just as Florida is in the size of the wheat crop. The fishermen in New England are interested in the output of oranges in California, as the Californians are interested in the catch