if that sentiment is to be
indeed the true inspiration of our nation's future. God grant it may be
as I believe it will.

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

THE "ATLANTIC" AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS

[Speech of William Dean Howells, as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," at
the dinner given to John Greenleaf Whittier, at Boston, Mass.,
December 17, 1877, in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday,
and in celebration also of the twentieth year of the magazine.]

GENTLEMEN, CONTRIBUTORS AND FRIENDS OF THE "ATLANTIC
MONTHLY":--The serious moment has approached which sooner or later
arrives at most banquets of the dinner-giving Anglo-Saxon race--a moment
when each commensal, like the pampered sacrifice of the Aztecs, suddenly
feels that the joys which have flattered him into forgetfulness of his
fate are at an end, and that he must now gird himself for expiation. It
is ordinarily a moment when the unprepared guest abandons himself to
despair, and when even the more prophetic spirit finds memory forsaking
it, or the treacherous ideas committed to paper withering away till the
manuscript in the breast-pocket rustles sere and sad as the leaves of
autumn. But let no one at this table be under a fearful apprehension.
This were to little purpose an image of the great republic of letters,
if the mind of any citizen might be invaded, and his right to hold his
peace denied. Any gentleman being called upon and having nothing to say,
can make his silent bow and sit down again without disfavor; he may even
do so with a reasonable hope of applause. Reluctant orators, therefore,
who are chafing under the dread of being summoned to stand and deliver
an extorted eloquence, and who have already begun to meditate reprisals
upon the person or the literature of the present speaker, may safely
suspend their preparations; it shall not be his odious duty to molest
them.

We are met, gentlemen, upon the seventieth birthday of a man and poet
whose fame is dear to us all, but whose modesty at first feared too much
the ordeal by praise, to consent to his meeting with us. But he must
soon have felt the futility of trying to stay away, of endeavoring to
class himself with the absent, who are always wrong. There are renowns
to which absence is impossible, and whether he would or no, Whittier
must still have been in every heart. Therefore he is here in person, to
the unbounded pleasure of those assembled to celebrate this day. I will
leave him to