ters who come forth from the comfortable firesides of
New England and other States, little trained to scenes of suffering,
little used to the rudeness of a life in camp, who gave their all, their
time, their health, and even life itself as a willing sacrifice in that
cause which then moved the nation's soul. As one of these, with her
graceful form, was seen moving silently through the darkened aisles of
an army hospital, as the motion of her passing dress wafted a breeze
across the face of the wounded, they felt that their parched brows had
been fanned by the wings of the angel of mercy.

Ah! Mr. President, woman is after all a mystery. It has been well said,
that woman is the great conundrum of the nineteenth century; but if we
can not guess her, we will never give her up.

TRIBUTE TO HERBERT SPENCER

BY WILLIAM M. EVARTS

Gentlemen:--We are here to-night, to show the feeling of Americans
toward our distinguished guest. As no room and no city can hold all his
friends and admirers, it was necessary that a company should be made up
by some method out of the mass, and what so good a method as that of
natural selection and the inclusion, within these walls, of the ladies?
It is a little hard upon the rational instincts and experiences of man
that we should take up the abstruse subjects of philosophy and of
evolution, of all the great topics that make up Mr. Spencer's
contribution to the learning and the wisdom of his time, at this end of
the dinner.

The most ancient nations, even in their primitive condition, saw the
folly of this, and when one wished either to be inspired with the
thoughts of others or to be himself a diviner of the thoughts of others,
fasting was necessary, and a people from whom I think a great many
things might be learned for the good of the people of the present time,
have a maxim that will commend itself to your common-sense. They say the
continually stuffed body can not see secret things. Now, from my
personal knowledge of the men I see at these tables, they are owners of
continually stuffed bodies. I have addrest them at public dinners, on
all topics and for all purposes, and whatever sympathy they may have
shown with the divers occasions which brought them together, they come
up to this notion of continually stuffed bodies. In primitive times
they had a custom which we only under the system of differentiation
practise now at this dinner. When men wished to possess themselves of
the