to take off
my hat to their marching column; I love to salute its passing banners.
They will always be the true bulwark of our defence. I know of no man,
and no set of men, who more gladly or more eagerly make this statement
than those who have been reared in the regular army; and I take
particular pride in making this acknowledgment and paying this tribute
in the presence of the senior and the most illustrious living commander
of our Citizen Soldiery. [Allusion to General Sherman followed by great
applause.]

* * * * *

THE MANY-SIDED PURITAN

[Speech of Horace Porter at the eighty-second annual dinner of the
New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1887.
Ex-Judge Horace Russell, the President of the Society, in
introducing General Porter, said: "James T. Brady used to say that
a good lawyer imbibed his law rather than read it. [Laughter.] If
that proposition holds true in other regards, the gentleman whom I
am to call to the next toast is one of the very best of New
Englanders--General Horace Porter [applause], who will speak to
'Puritan Influence.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--While you were eating
Forefathers' dinner here a year ago, I happened to be in Mexico, but on
my return I found that the Puritan influence had extended to me, for I
was taken for the distinguished head of this organization, and was in
receipt of no end of letters addressed to General Horace Russell and
Judge Horace Porter and Mr. Horace Russell and Porter, President of the
New England Society, and all begging for a copy of Grady's[5] speech.
Distant communities had got the names of the modern Horatii mixed.
[Laughter.] In replying I had to acknowledge that my nativity barred me
out from the moral realms of this puritanical society, and I could only
coincide with Charles II when he said he always admired virtue, but he
never could imitate it. [Laughter and applause.] When the Puritan
influence spread across the ocean; when it was imported here as part of
the cargo of the Mayflower, the crew of the craft, like sensible men,
steered for the port of New York, but a reliable tradition informs us
that the cook on board that vessel chopped his wood on deck and always
stood with his broadaxe on the starboard side of the binnacle, and that
this mass of ferruginous substance so attracted the needle that the ship
brought up in Plymouth harbor. And t