task to pay the most many-sided man a different compliment year
after year, and the President of the University must pardon me for
saying that he gives a good deal of trouble to the President of the
Alumni, as he is apt to do in the case of inefficient persons generally.
[Laughter and applause.] One eminent quality, however, I can illustrate
in a familiar Latin quotation, which, with your permission, I will put
in two ways, thus securing, I should hope, the understanding of the
older and younger among you: "_Justum et tenacem propositi virum_." [Mr.
Lowell evoked considerable laughter by pronouncing the Latin according
to the continental method.] I give you the health of President Eliot.

* * * * *

THE STAGE

[Speech of James Russell Lowell at a breakfast given to American actors
at the Savage Club, London, August, 1880. Charles Dickens [the son of
the novelist] occupied the post of chairman and called upon Mr. Lowell
to respond to the toast proposed in his honor: "The Health of the
American Minister."]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--In listening to the kind words and
still more in hearing the name of the gentleman who was kind enough to
propose the toast to which I am replying, I cannot help recalling the
words of one of your English poets:--

"Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"

I was honored with the acquaintance, in some sort, I may say, with the
friendship of the father of the gentleman who proposed my name, and
before saying anything further you will allow me to remark that my
countrymen are always ready to recognize the hereditary claims when
based upon hereditary merit. ["Hear! Hear!"]

Gentlemen, it is a great pleasure to me to be here, but in some sense I
regard it also as a kind of duty to be present on any occasion when the
star-spangled banner and the red cross of England hang opposite each
other, in friendly converse. May they never hang opposite each other in
any other spirit. [Cheers.] I say so because I think it is the duty of
any man who in any sense represents one of the English-speaking races,
to be present on an occasion which indicates, as this does, that we are
one in all those great principles which lie at the basis of civilized
society--never mind what the form of government may be.

As I sat here, gentlemen, endeavoring to collect my thoughts and finding
it, I may say, as difficult as to make a