rom the college and the country.
These meetings were held at Delmonico's, then located in
Fourteenth Street. The last was so phenomenally dull that there
were no repetitions.

The speakers were called by classes, and the oldest in graduation
had the platform. The result was disastrous. These old men all
spoke too long, and it was an endless stream of platitudes and
reminiscences of forgotten days until nearly morning. Then an
inspiration of the chairman led him to say: "I think it might be
well to have a word from the younger graduates."

There was a unanimous call for a well-known humorist named Styles.
His humor was aided by a startling appearance of abundant red hair,
an aggressive red mustache, and eyes which seemed to push his
glasses off his nose. Many of the speakers, owing to the
imperfection of the dental art in those days, indicated their
false teeth by their trouble in keeping them in place, and the
whistling it gave to their utterances. One venerable orator in his
excitement dropped his into his tumbler in the midst of his address.

Styles said to this tired audience: "At this early hour in the
morning I will not attempt to speak, but I will tell a story.
Down at Barnegat, N. J., where I live, our neighbors are very fond
of apple-jack. One of them while in town had his jug filled, and
on the way home saw a friend leaning over the gate and looking
so thirsty that he stopped and handed over his jug with an offer of
its hospitality. After sampling it the neighbor continued the
gurgling as the jug rose higher and higher, until there was not
a drop left in it. The indignant owner said: 'You infernal hog,
why did you drink up all my apple-jack?' His friend answered:
'I beg your pardon, Job, but I could not bite off the tap, because
I have lost all my teeth.'" The aptness of the story was the
success of the evening.

Some years afterwards there was a meeting of the alumni to form
a live association. Among those who participated in the organization
were William Walter Phelps, afterwards member of Congress and
minister to Austria; Judge Henry E. Howland; John Proctor Clarke,
now chief justice of the Appellate Division; James R. Sheffield
(several years later) now president of the Union League Club;
and Isaac Bromley, one of the editors of the New York Tribune,
one of the wittiest writers of his time, and many others who have
since won distinction. They elected me president, and I continued
such