in the many and at times impassioned conflicts of
journalistic dispute, the rugged and sharp-angled walls which divide us
are ever so beautiful and fragrant with the flowers of good-fellowship,
as is impressively taught by this assembly.

Thus charged with the highest of civil trusts in the most enlightened
government of the earth, the editor must be honored or dishonored here
by the measure of his fidelity to his exceptional duties, and must be so
judged in the hereafter, when the narrow pathway of life that divides
past and future eternities has been traversed. We come when bidden, we
know not whence; we go when bidden, we know not whither; but each and
all have duties to themselves, to their homes, to their country, and to
the common brotherhood of man, which when performed with the
faithfulness that human infirmities will permit, must greatly brighten
the brief and often fretful journey from the cradle to the grave.
Friends, in this evening twilight of my journalistic work, so sweetly
mellowed by the smiling faces, young and old, about me, I answer your
generous greeting with the gratitude that can perish only when the
gathering shadows shall have settled into the night that comes to purple
the better morn.

ST. CLAIR McKELWAY

SMASHED CROCKERY

[Speech of St. Clair McKelway before the National Society of China
Importers, New York City, February 6, 1896.]

MR. CHAIRMAN AND FRIENDS:--The china I buy abroad is marked
"Fragile" in shipment. That which I buy at home is marked: "Glass--This
Side Up With Care." The foreign word of caution is fact. The American
note of warning is fiction--with a moral motive. The common purpose of
both is protection from freight fractors and baggage smashers. The
European appeals to knowledge. The American addresses the imagination.
The one expresses the truth. The other extends it. Neither is entirely
successful. The skill and care of shippers cannot always victoriously
cope with the innate destructiveness of fallen human nature. There is a
great deal of smashed crockery in the world.

You who are masters in the art of packing things and we whose vocation
is the art of putting things, both have reason to know that no pains of
placing or of preparation will guarantee freight or phrases, plates or
propositions, china of any kind or principles of any sort, from the
dangers of travel or from the tests of time. Your goods and our wares
have to take their chances in their wa