Are we such men,
gentlemen? And can we talk freely as such among ourselves?"

Their conversation, carried on in ordinary tones, had not been marked
by any. Their brows, drawn sharp in sudden resolution, their glance
each to the other, made their ratification of this extraordinary
speech.

They had no time for anything further at the moment. A sound came to
their ears, and they turned toward the head of the long table, where
the tall figure of the President of the United States was rising in
his place. The dinner had drawn toward its close.

Mr. Jefferson now stood, gravely regarding those before him, his keen
eye losing no detail of the strange scene. He knew the place of every
man and woman at that board--perhaps this was his own revenge for a
reception he once had had at London. But at last he spoke.

"I have news for you all, my friends, today; news which applies not to
one man nor to one woman of this or any country more than to another,
but news which belongs to all the world."

He paused for a moment, and held up in his right hand a tiny scrap of
paper, thin, crumpled. None could guess what significance it had.

"May God in His own power punish me," said he, solemnly, "if ever I
halt or falter in what I believe to be my duty! I place no bounds to
the future of this republic--based, as I firmly believe it to be, upon
the enduring principle of the just and even rights of mankind.

"Our country to the West always has inspired me with the extremest
curiosity, and animated me with the loftiest hopes. Since the year
1683 that great river, the Missouri, emptying into the Mississippi,
has been looked upon as the way to the Pacific Ocean. One hundred
years from that time--that is to say, in 1783--I myself asked one of
the ablest of our Westerners, none other than General George Rogers
Clark, to undertake a journey of exploration up that Western river. It
was not done. Three years later, when accredited to the court at
Paris, I met a Mr. Ledyard, an American then abroad. I desired him to
cross Russia, Siberia and the Pacific Ocean, and then to journey
eastward over the Stony Mountains, to find, if he could, the head of
that Missouri River of which we know so little. But Ledyard failed,
for reasons best known, perhaps, to the monarch of Russia.

"Later than that, and long before I had the power which now is mine to
order matters of the sort, the Boston sailor, Captain Grey, in 1792,
as you know, found the mouth of