He gave scant attention to his audience in the way of ceremonial greeting, and plunged at once into his subject; --beginning in a high, piping, falsetto voice which, for a few moments, was almost painful. But the value of his matter soon overcame the defects of his manner; the speech was in his best vein; it struck me as the best, on the whole, I had ever heard him make, and that is saying much. Holding in his hands a little package of cards on which notes were jotted down, he occasionally cast his eyes upon them, but he evidently trusted to the inspiration of the hour for his phrasing, and his trust was not misplaced. I never heard a more simple, strong, lucid use of the English language than was his on that occasion. The speech was a very noble plea for the restoration of good feeling between North and South, with an effort to show that the distrust felt by the South toward the North was natural. In the course of it he said in substance: ``Fellow Citizens: The people of the South have much reason to distrust us. We have sent among them during the war and since the war, to govern them, to hold office among them, and to eat out their substance, a number of worthless adventurers whom they call ``carpet-baggers.'' These emissaries of ours pretend to be patriotic and pious; they pull long faces and say `Let us pray'; but they spell it p-r-E-y. The people of the South hate them, and they ought to hate them.'' At this we in the audience looked at each other in amazement; for, standing close beside Mr. Greeley, at that very moment, most obsequiously, was perhaps the worst ``carpet-bagger'' ever sent into the South; a man who had literally been sloughed off by both parties;-- who, having been become an unbearable nuisance in New York politics, had been ``unloaded'' by Mr. Lincoln, in an ill-inspired moment, upon the hapless South, and who was now trying to find new pasture. But this was not the most comical thing; for Mr. Greeley in substance continued as follows: ``Fellow Citizens: You know how it is yourselves. There are men who go to your own State Capitol, nominally as legislators or advisers, but really to plunder and steal. These men in the Northern States correspond to the `carpet-baggers' in the Southern States, and you hate them and you ought to hate them.'' Thus speaking, Mr. Greeley poured out the vials of his wrath against all this class of people; blissfully unconscious of the fact that on the other side of him stood the most notorious and corrupt lobbyist who had been known in Albany for years;-- a man who had been chased out of that city by the sheriff for attempted bribery, had been obliged to remain for a considerable time in hiding to avoid criminal charges of exerting corrupt influence on legislation, and whom both political parties naturally disowned. Comical as all this was, it was pathetic to see a man like Greeley in such a cave of Adullam.