Roosevelt has probably betrayed me
into the complimentary excess; but I know him, and you know him; and
if you give him rope enough--I mean if--oh yes, he will justify that
compliment; leave it just as it is. And now we have put in his place
Mr. Odell, another Rough Rider, I suppose; all the fat things go to that
profession now. Why, I could have been a Rough Rider myself if I had
known that this political Klondike was going to open up, and I would
have been a Rough Rider if I could have gone to war on an automobile but
not on a horse! No, I know the horse too well; I have known the horse
in war and in peace, and there is no place where a horse is comfortable.
The horse has too many caprices, and he is too much given to initiative.
He invents too many new ideas. No, I don't want anything to do with a
horse.

And then we have taken Chauncey Depew out of a useful and active life
and made him a Senator--embalmed him, corked him up. And I am not
grieving. That man has said many a true thing about me in his time, and
I always said something would happen to him. Look at that [pointing to
Mr. Depew] gilded mummy! He has made my life a sorrow to me at many a
banquet on both sides of the ocean, and now he has got it. Perish the
hand that pulls that cork!

All these things have happened, all these things have come to pass,
while I have been away, and it just shows how little a Mugwump can be
missed in a cold, unfeeling world, even when he is the last one that is
left--a GRAND OLD PARTY all by himself. And there is another thing
that has happened, perhaps the most imposing event of them all: the
institution called the Daughters of the--Crown--the Daughters of the
Royal Crown--has established itself and gone into business. Now, there's
an American idea for you; there's an idea born of God knows what kind of
specialized insanity, but not softening of the brain--you cannot soften
a thing that doesn't exist--the Daughters of the Royal Crown! Nobody
eligible but American descendants of Charles II. Dear me, how the fancy
product of that old harem still holds out!

Well, I am truly glad to foregather with you again, and partake of the
bread and salt of this hospitable house once more. Seven years ago, when
I was your guest here, when I was old and despondent, you gave me the
grip and the word that lift a man up and make him glad to be alive; and
now I come back from my exile young again, fresh and alive, and ready to
begin life once m