unique piece of work in this reception, and we are
expecting perhaps that the world may be instructed after you are safely
on the other side of the Atlantic in a more intimate and thorough manner
concerning our merits and our few faults. This faculty of laying on a
dissecting board an entire nation or an entire age and finding out all
the arteries and veins and pulsations of their life is an extension
beyond any that our own medical schools afford. You give us that
knowledge of man which is practical and useful, and whatever the claims
or the debates may be about your system or the system of those who agree
with you, and however it may be compared with other competing systems
that have preceded it, we must all agree that it is practical, that it
is benevolent, that it is serious and that it is reverent; that it aims
at the highest results in virtue; that it treats evil, not as eternal,
but as evanescent, and that it expects to arrive at what is sought
through the aid of the millennium--that condition of affairs in which
there is the highest morality and the greatest happiness. And if we can
come to that by these processes and these instructions, it matters
little to the race whether it be called scientific morality and
mathematical freedom or by another less pretentious name. You will
please fill your glasses while we propose the health of our guest,
Herbert Spencer.

THE EMPIRE STATE[3]

MR. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

Mr. President and Gentlemen:--It has been my lot from a time whence I
can not remember to respond each year to this toast. When I received the
invitation from the committee, its originality and ingenuity astonished
and overwhelmed me. But there is one thing the committee took into
consideration when they invited me to this platform. This is a
Presidential year, and it becomes men not to trust themselves talking on
dangerous topics. The State of New York is eminently safe. Ever since
the present able and distinguished Governor has held his place I have
been called upon by the New England Society to respond for him. It is
probably due to that element in the New Englander that he delights in
provoking controversy. The Governor is a Democrat, and I am a
Republican. Whatever he believes in I detest; whatever he admires I
hate. The manner in which this toast is received leads me to believe
that in the New England Society his administration is unanimously
approved. Governor Robinson, if I understand correctl