“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Caleb, clearing his voice and looking down the great room across the concourse of wondering, amused, or expectant faces that gently swayed in a faint haze before his eyes, “I guess you all know, without my telling you, how glad I am to see you here to-night, and I want you should enjoy every minute of your evening. Some of you are old friends of mine. There’s more’n a few here to-night that remembers me when I was barefooted Cale Conover, without a dollar to my name nor any very hectic prospects of getting one. “But there’s a lot more of you here that I hadn’t the honor of knowing then, nor for that matter of meeting at all till to-night. It’s to these, mostly, that I’m talking now. For I want ’em to know me better and like me better. Maybe if they hear more about me they will. That’s why I’m on my feet now. “I b’lieve it isn’t customary to make a speech any more at parties. But you’ll have to forgive me. I’m not much onto the latest frills and fashions. But give me a chance, and I’ll learn as easy as a Chinaman. It came to me all of a sudden to say what I’ve got to say, right here and now, even if it’s at the expense of a little etiquette. I’ve asked you here to-night, mainly, of course, for the pleasure of entertaining you, and I hope you’re all having a real good time. But I had another reason, too.” The men at the tables looked perplexed. Was this the Caleb Conover they had met and cringed to in the outer world, this garrulous, rambling man with the flushed face? “You see, I’ve come to be a kind of a feature of this city of ours and of the State, too. I’m here to stay. And I want that my towns-folks and my fellow-residents of the Mountain State should know me. Many of ’em do. There’s a full half-million folks in this city and State that know all about Caleb Conover. They know he’s on the square, that he’ll look after their interests, that he’s a white man. They know he’s a man they can trust in their public life and welcome in their homes. And, as I said, there’s a lot of these people here to-night. “But there’s a lot of other folks here who only know me by what slander and jokes they’ve picked up around town or in the out-of-State newspapers. It’s these latter folks I’m talking to now. I want them to know the _real_ me; not the uneducated crook and illiterate feller my p’litical enemies have made me out. They can’t think I’m _all_ bad, or they wouldn’t be my guests. Would they, now? And a little frankness ought to do the rest. “Some people say I’ve risen from the gutter. Well, I’ve _risen_ from it, haven’t I? A lot of men on Pompton Avenue and in the big clubs are just where they started when they were born. Not a step in advance of where their fathers left ’em. Swell chance _they’d_ have had if their parents had started ’em in the gutter as mine did, wouldn’t they? Where’d they be now? “What does the start amount to? The finish line’s where the score’s counted. Gutter or palace.