ressed upon the
American people in that noble present you are designing to make to us,
in the great statue of "Liberty enlightening the World," an unexampled
munificence from the private citizens of one nation to the people of
another. We are to furnish the island for its site and the pedestal to
place the statue on. This our people will do with an enthusiasm equal to
your own. But, after all, the obligation will be wholly ours, for it is
to be a lighthouse in our great harbor, a splendid monument to add new
beauty to the glorious Bay of New York. [Applause.]

* * * * *

TRIBUTE TO HERBERT SPENCER

[Speech of William M. Evarts at a dinner given to Herbert Spencer, New
York City, November 9, 1882, the day before his return to England. Mr.
Evarts presided, and delivered this speech, in introducing Mr. Spencer
to the company.]

GENTLEMEN:--We are here to-night, to show the feeling of
Americans toward our distinguished guest. As no room and no city can
hold all his friends and admirers, it was necessary that a company
should be made up by some method out of the mass, and what so good a
method as that of natural selection [laughter] and the inclusion, within
these walls, of the ladies? It is a little hard upon the rational
instincts and experience of man that we should take up the abstruse
subjects of philosophy and of evolution, of all the great topics that
make up Mr. Spencer's contribution to the learning and the wisdom of his
time, at this end of the dinner.

The most ancient nations, even in their primitive condition, saw the
folly of this, and when one wished either to be inspired with the
thoughts of others or to be himself a diviner of the thoughts of others,
fasting was necessary, and a people from whom I think a great many
things might be learned for the good of the people of the present time
have a maxim that will commend itself to your common-sense. They say the
continually stuffed body cannot see secret things. [Laughter.] Now, from
my personal knowledge of the men I see at these tables, they are owners
of continually stuffed bodies. [Laughter.] I have addressed them at
public dinners, on all topics and for all purposes, and whatever
sympathy they may have shown with the divers occasions which brought
them together, they come up to this notion of continually stuffed
bodies. In primitive times they had a custom which we only under the
system of differentiation prac