ips this evening. His soundness, his fairness, his learning, his
devotion to duty, his urbanity,--these are the qualities which have
commended him to universal esteem and honor. [Applause.] I will not say
more of the living; I wish to speak of the dead.

In respectfully proposing the memory of his great-great-grandmother
[laughter], I am speaking of one whom few if any of you can remember.
[Laughter.] Yet her face is as familiar to me as that of any member of
my household. She looks upon me as I sit at my writing-table; she does
not smile, she does not speak; even the green parrot on her hand has
never opened his beak; but there she is, calm, unchanging, in her
immortal youth, as when the untutored artist fixed her features on the
canvas. To think that one little word from the lips of Dorothy Quincy,
your great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, decided the question
whether you and I should be here to-night [laughter], in fact whether we
should be anywhere [laughter] at all, or remain two bodiless dreams of
nature! But it was Dorothy Quincy's "Yes" or "No" to Edward Jackson
which was to settle that important matter--important to both of us,
certainly--yes, Your Honor; and I can say truly, as I look at you and
remember your career, important to this and the whole American
community. [Applause.]

The picture I referred to is but a rude one, and yet I was not ashamed
of it when I wrote a copy of verses about it, three or four of which
this audience will listen to for the sake of Dorothy's great-grandson. I
must alter the pronouns a little, for this occasion only:--

Look not on her with eyes of scorn--
Dorothy Q. was a lady born;
Ay! since the galloping Normans came
England's annals have known her name;
And still to the three-hilled rebel town
Dear is that ancient name's renown,
For many a civic wreath they won,
The youthful sire and the gray-haired son.

O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
Strange is the gift (we) owe to you!
Such a gift as never a king
Save to daughter or son might bring--
All (our) tenure of heart and hand,
All (our) title to house and land;
Mother and sister and child and wife
And joy and sorrow and death and life!

What if a hundred years ago
Those close-shut lips had answered "No!"
When forth the tremulous question came
That cost the maiden her Norman name,
And under the folds that look so still
The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill--
S