DINNER OF THE NEW YORK POST-GRADUATE
MEDICAL SCHOOL AND HOSPITAL, JANUARY 21, 1909

The president, Dr. George N. Miller, in introducing Mr.
Clemens, referred to his late experience with burglars.

GENTLEMEN AND DOCTORS,--I am glad to be among my own kind to-night. I
was once a sharpshooter, but now I practise a much higher and equally as
deadly a profession. It wasn't so very long ago that I became a member
of your cult, and for the time I've been in the business my record is
one that can't be scoffed at.

As to the burglars, I am perfectly familiar with these people. I have
always had a good deal to do with burglars--not officially, but through
their attentions to me. I never suffered anything at the hands of a
burglar. They have invaded my house time and time again. They never got
anything. Then those people who burglarized our house in September--we
got back the plated ware they took off, we jailed them, and I have been
sorry ever since. They did us a great service they scared off all the
servants in the place.

I consider the Children's Theatre, of which I am president, and the
Post-Graduate Medical School as the two greatest institutions in the
country. This school, in bringing its twenty thousand physicians from
all parts of the country, bringing them up to date, and sending them
back with renewed confidence, has surely saved hundreds of thousands of
lives which otherwise would have been lost.

I have been practising now for seven months. When I settled on my farm
in Connecticut in June I found the Community very thinly settled--and
since I have been engaged in practice it has become more thinly settled
still. This gratifies me, as indicating that I am making an impression
on my community. I suppose it is the same with all of you.

I have always felt that I ought to do something for you, and so I
organized a Redding (Connecticut) branch of the Post-Graduate School. I
am only a country farmer up there, but I am doing the best I can.

Of course, the practice of medicine and surgery in a remote country
district has its disadvantages, but in my case I am happy in a division
of responsibility. I practise in conjunction with a horse-doctor, a
sexton, and an undertaker. The combination is air-tight, and once a man
is stricken in our district escape is impossible for him.

These four of us--three in the regular profession and the fourth an
undertaker--are all good men. There is Bill