conceivable if
expressed in silence. (Cheers.)

When this office was proposed to me, some of you know that I was not
very ambitious to accept it, at first. I was taught to believe that
there were more or less certain important duties which would lie in
my power. This, I confess, was my chief motive in going into it--at
least, in reconciling the objections felt to such things; for if I can
do anything to honour you and my dear old _Alma Mater_, why should I
not do so? (Loud cheers.) Well, but on practically looking into the
matter when the office actually came into my hands, I find it grows
more and more uncertain and abstruse to me whether there is much real
duty that I can do at all. I live four hundred miles away from you,
in an entirely different state of things; and my weak health--now for
many years accumulating upon me--and a total unacquaintance with
such subjects as concern your affairs here,--all this fills me
with apprehension that there is really nothing worth the least
consideration that I can do on that score. You may, however, depend
upon it that if any such duty does arise in any form, I will use my
most faithful endeavour to do whatever is right and proper, according
to the best of my judgment. (Cheers.)

In the meanwhile, the duty I have at present--which might be very
pleasant, but which is quite the reverse, as you may fancy--is to
address some words to you on some subjects more or less cognate to the
pursuits you are engaged in. In fact, I had meant to throw out some
loose observations--loose in point of order, I mean--in such a way as
they may occur to me--the truths I have in me about the business you
are engaged in, the race you have started on, what kind of race it is
you young gentlemen have begun, and what sort of arena you are likely
to find in this world. I ought, I believe, according to custom, to
have written all that down on paper, and had it read out. That would
have been much handier for me at the present moment (a laugh), but
when I attempted to write, I found that I was not accustomed to write
speeches, and that I did not get on very well. So I flung that away,
and resolved to trust to the inspiration of the moment--just to what
came uppermost. You will therefore have to accept what is readiest,
what comes direct from the heart, and you must just take that in
compensation for any good order of arrangement there might have been
in it.

I will endeavour to say nothing that is not tru