ut look here, Billy! 'Spose you
was in de boat, in de middle of de river, wid yo' wife and yo'
mudder-in-law?" "Oh, what a cinch!"--said Billy. "And de boat,"
continued Johnson, "was to strike a snag and smash to pieces, and
eberybody go into de water, who would you save?" "My wife, dar! my
mudder-in-law dar! and de boat strike a snag?" "Yes!" "I would save de
snag," said Billy. "I could get anudder wife, I might den have anudder
mudder-in-law, but where under de blue canopy of hebben could I find
anudder dear, thoughtful old snag?" [Laughter.]

It has been well said that "all a woman has to do in this world is
contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a
mother." She has sustained at least one of these relations to even the
poorest of us; but I wonder if there is a man here to-night so miserably
abject and forlorn and God-forsaken as not, some time in his life, to
have been able to regard her in the delightful relation of sweetheart? I
hope not. I would rather he had had a dozen, than no sweetheart at all.
The most unselfish devotion we may ever know is that of our mother; a
sweet affection is that of our sisters, a most tender love is that of
our daughters, but the love and affection we all want, and without which
we are never satisfied, is that of the sweethearts who reward our
devotion--out of all proportion to our deserts--by becoming our wives
and the mothers of our daughters. [Applause.]

It is not less the pleasure than the duty of every man to have a
sweetheart--I was almost tempted to say, the more, the merrier--and the
sooner he makes one of his sweethearts his wife, the better for him. If
he is a "woman-hater," or professes to be (for, as a matter of fact,
there is no such anomaly as a genuine "woman-hater" at liberty in this
great and glorious country), let him beware, as I believe with
Thackeray, that a "woman, with fair opportunities, and without an
absolute hump, may _marry_ whom she likes. [Laughter.] Only let us be
thankful that the darlings are like the beasts of the field, and don't
know their own power." As the poet--what's-his-name--so beautifully and
feelingly and touchingly observes:--

"Oh, woman, in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,"--
"But seen too oft, familiar with her face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

Next to God, we are indebted to woman for life itself, and then for
making it worth living. To describe her, the pen shoul