Love Virtue; she alone is free;
She can teach ye how to climb
Higher than the sphery chime.
Or if Virtue feeble were,
Heaven itself would stoop to her."

THE ENGLISH-SPEAKING RACE

BY GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Chamber of Commerce:--I rise with some
trepidation to respond to this toast, because we have been assured upon
high authority, altho after what we have heard this evening we can not
believe it, that the English-speaking race speaks altogether too much.
Our eloquent Minister in England recently congratulated the Mechanics'
Institute at Nottingham that it had abolished its debating club, and
said that he gladly anticipated the establishment in all great
institutions of education of a professorship of Silence. I confess that
the proposal never seemed to me so timely and wise as at this moment.
If I had only taken a high degree in silence, Mr. Chairman, how
cordially you would congratulate me and this cheerful company!

When Mr. Phelps proceeded to say that Americans are not allowed to talk
all the time, and that our orators are turned loose upon the public only
once in four years, I was lost in admiration of the boundless sweep of
his imagination. But when he said that the result of this quadrennial
outburst was to make the country grateful that it did not come oftener,
I saw that his case required heroic treatment, and must be turned over
to Dr. Depew.

I am sure, at least, that when our distinguished friends from England
return to their native land they will hasten to besiege His Excellency
to tell them where the Americans are kept who speak only once in four
years. And if they will but remain through the winter, they will
discover that if our orators are turned loose upon the public only once
in four years, they are turned loose in private all the rest of the
time; and if the experience and observation of our guests are as
fortunate as mine, they will learn that there are certain orators of
both branches of the English-speaking race--not one hundred miles from
me at this moment--whom the public would gladly hear, if they were
turned loose upon it every four hours.

Wendell Phillips used to say that as soon as a Yankee baby could sit up
in his cradle, he called the nursery to order and proceeded to address
the house. If this Parliamentary instinct is irrepressible, if all the
year round we are listening to orations, speeches, lectures, sermon