[Laughter.] So when this great corporation of the newspaper press fund
gives its annual dinner, what more natural and fitting than a politician
or an actor in the chair, who illustrates in his person and in his own
fortunes both the appreciation and the discipline which it is the
function of the press so liberally to bestow? I can imagine that when
such a chairman happens to be a pretty old stager like myself, there may
be journalists in such a distinguished company as this who will look at
him with the moistened eye of emotional reminiscence and murmur: "Ah, it
was upon that man I fleshed my maiden pen!" [Laughter.] Thoughts like
these shed the mellowing influence of time over the volumes of press
cuttings which no actor's library is without. I have heard of public men
who say they never read the newspapers. That remark has been attributed
to a bishop, and perhaps there are kinds of abstinence quite easy to
bishops but difficult to other mortals. [Laughter.] If it were possible
for a man whose doings are considered worthy of public notice to avoid
the newspaper, he could scarcely hope to make his friends practice the
same denial. Even a bishop who is not inquisitive must occasionally meet
deans and chapters who are. [Laughter.] There's the rub. You may not
read the newspapers, but as soon as you scent the morning air you know
whether those proverbial little birds who spread the news with such
alacrity, are chirping about yourself, and the first feathered
acquaintance that you hit upon is generously eager to share with you the
crumb picked from a newspaper with a special flavor for your own palate.

Gentlemen, I mention this, not by way of complaint, but simply to
illustrate the futility of that philosophy which fondly imagines that
the newspaper can be ignored. But I am chiefly conscious to-night of the
debt of gratitude we all owe to the press. The newspaper--say what you
will of it--is the immediate recorder and interpreter of life. Morning
and evening it offers us that perpetual stimulus which makes the zest of
living. Be your interests what they may, though you abstract your mind
from the tumult of affairs and devote it to art or science, you cannot
open a newspaper without the sensation of laying your hand upon the
throbbing pulse of the world. And it has throbbed within but a few days,
throbbed with a widespread grief at the passing of a great man [Mr.
Gladstone], a great statesman, a great and noble figure in prod