allic tongue.

It has always been a marvel to me--that French language; it has always
been a puzzle to me. How beautiful that language is. How expressive it
seems to be. How full of grace it is.

And when it comes from lips like those, how eloquent and how liquid
it is. And, oh, I am always deceived--I always think I am going to
understand it.

Oh, it is such a delight to me, such a delight to me, to meet Madame
Bernhardt, and laugh hand to hand and heart to heart with her.

I have seen her play, as we all have, and oh, that is divine; but I have
always wanted to know Madame Bernhardt herself--her fiery self. I have
wanted to know that beautiful character.

Why, she is the youngest person I ever saw, except myself--for I always
feel young when I come in the presence of young people.

I have a pleasant recollection of an incident so many years ago--when
Madame Bernhardt came to Hartford, where I lived, and she was going
to play and the tickets were three dollars, and there were two lovely
women--a widow and her daughter--neighbors of ours, highly cultivated
ladies they were; their tastes were fine and elevated, but they were
very poor, and they said "Well, we must not spend six dollars on a
pleasure of the mind, a pleasure of the intellect; we must spend it, if
it must go at all, to furnish to somebody bread to eat."

And so they sorrowed over the fact that they had to give up that great
pleasure of seeing Madame Bernhardt, but there were two neighbors
equally highly cultivated and who could not afford bread, and those
good-hearted Joneses sent that six dollars--deprived themselves of
it--and sent it to those poor Smiths to buy bread with. And those Smiths
took it and bought tickets with it to see Madame Bernhardt.

Oh yes, some people have tastes and intelligence also.

Now, I was going to make a speech--I supposed I was, but I am not. It
is late, late; and so I am going to tell a story; and there is this
advantage about a story, anyway, that whatever moral or valuable thing
you put into a speech, why, it gets diffused among those involuted
sentences and possibly your audience goes away without finding out what
that valuable thing was that you were trying to confer upon it; but,
dear me, you put the same jewel into a story and it becomes the keystone
of that story, and you are bound to get it--it flashes, it flames, it is
the jewel in the toad's head--you don't overlook that.

Now, if I am going to talk on su