en the paragraphs in the prayer, at the assembled guests, I found
that the Hottentots were the only people who had not some friends among
the company." [Laughter.]

Gentlemen of the New England Society, if I were to denounce the views of
the Puritans to-night, they would be like the Hottentots. [Laughter.]
Nay more, if one of their number were to come into this banqueting hall
and sit down at this splendid feast, so unlike what he had been wont to
see, and were to expound his views as to constitutional liberty and as
to religious toleration, or as to the relations of the Church to the
State, I am very much afraid that you and I would be tempted to answer
him as an American answered an English traveller in a railway-carriage
in Belgium. Said this Englishman, whom I happened to meet in Brussels,
and who recognized me as an American citizen: "Your countrymen have a
very strange conception of the English tongue: I never heard any people
who speak the English language in such an odd way as the Americans do."
"What do you mean?" I said; "I supposed that in the American States the
educated and cultivated people spoke the English tongue with the utmost
propriety, with the same accuracy and the same classical refinement as
yours." He replied: "I was travelling hither, and found sitting opposite
an intelligent gentleman, who turned out to be an American. I went on to
explain to him my views as to the late unpleasantness in America. I told
him how profoundly I deplored the results of the civil war. That I
believed the interests of good government would have been better
advanced if the South, rather than the North, had triumphed. I showed
him at great length how, if the South had succeeded, you would have been
able to have laid in that land, first, the foundations of an
aristocracy, and then from that would have grown a monarchy; how by the
planters you would have got a noble class, and out of that class you
would have got a king; and after I had drawn this picture I showed to
him what would have been the great and glorious result; and what do you
think was his reply to these views? He turned round, looked me coolly in
the face, and said, 'Why, what a blundering old cuss you are!'" [Great
laughter.] Gentlemen, if one of our New England ancestors were here
to-night, expounding his views to us, I am very much afraid that you and
I would be tempted to turn round and say: "Why, what a blundering old
cuss you are!" [Renewed laughter.]