the true humorist and the true man of letters will most highly
prize. He deserves all the grateful honor we can pay him because he
has made substantial additions to the sum of human enjoyment in the
world. I give you the health of Mr. Leland, and with it our best
wishes for his long life and prosperity to the end."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--I have been asked several times
since my return what struck me most, after an eleven years' absence, and
I should say it is the fact that I am remembered. It has never struck me
so forcibly as this evening. I have been for eleven years over the sea;
I have returned like the proverbial story, somewhat worn, perhaps, but
still accepted, and I am very much gratified that it is so. Time passes
so rapidly, and especially here in New York, that to be remembered after
so long an absence is especially gratifying.

I met in Europe a Mr. Boyd, whose family two centuries before had
resided in Ireland. Mr. Boyd thought one day that he would go back and
visit his relatives, and so he went back and met with an Irish cousin.
"Ah, Cousin Boyd," said his relative, "I am glad to see you, and though
you have not been here for more than two hundred years, still I can
easily trace the illegant resemblance." [Laughter.] Gentlemen, you seem
inclined to trace the resemblance. I am still known, and that has
touched me more than anything.

But I am not altogether so great a stranger to New York. To be sure, I
was born in Philadelphia; that cannot be denied; but I have also lived
in New York. I was a long time in New York, and, indeed, was a
freeholder of the city. I once owned a piece of property here, on which
a Dutchman planted his cabbages but never paid any rent--and I never
asked him for any; finally I gave a man eighty dollars to take the
property off my hands altogether. I also voted in New York; and in this
I fared better than in freeholding, for I voted for Abraham Lincoln at
his first election. [Applause.]

I have also been a business man in New York. I started "Vanity Fair,"
with Charles Browne [Artemus Ward] as an assistant, and I remember how I
used to suggest the subjects to him, and how he used to write out the
series of articles which have since become so widely known. The "Revue
des Deux Mondes" recently gave a detailed account of the manner in
which I brought out Artemus Ward, in which by far too much credit was
given to me and too little to him. But this was all done in N