stly, Satan came also, the printer's, if not
the public's devil, _in propria persona_! [Laughter.] The rest of you
gentlemen have better provided for yourselves. Even the Chamber of
Commerce took the benefit of clergy. The Presidential candidates and the
representatives of the Administration and the leading statesmen who
throng your hospitable board, all put forward as their counsel the
Attorney-General [Alphonso Taft] of the United States. And, as one of
his old clients at my left said a moment ago, "a precious dear old
counsel he was." [Laughter.]

The Press is without clergymen or counsel; and you doubtless wish it
were also without voice. At this hour none of you have the least desire
to hear anything or to say anything about the press. There are a number
of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that platform--I utterly
refuse to say whether I refer to Presidential candidates or not--but
there were a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that
table, who are very much more anxious to know what the press to-morrow
morning will have to say about them [laughter], and I know it because I
saw the care with which they handed up to the reporters the manuscript
copies of their entirely unprepared and extempore remarks. [Laughter.]

Gentlemen, the press is a mild-spoken and truly modest institution which
never chants its own praises. Unlike Walt Whitman, it never celebrates
itself. Even if it did become me--one of the youngest of its conductors
in New York--to undertake at this late hour to inflict upon you its
eulogy, there are two circumstances which might well make me pause. It
is an absurdity for me--an absurdity, indeed, for any of us--to assume
to speak for the press of New York at a table where William Cullen
Bryant sits silent. Besides, I have been reminded since I came here, by
Dr. Chapin, that the pithiest eulogy ever pronounced upon the first
editor of America, was pronounced in this very room and from that very
platform by the man who at that time was the first of living editors in
this country, when he said that he honored the memory of Benjamin
Franklin because he was a journeyman printer who did not drink, a
philosopher who wrote common sense, and an office-holder who did not
steal. [Applause.]

One word only of any seriousness about your toast; it says: "The
Press--right or wrong; when right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be
set right." Gentlemen, this is your affair. A stream will not r