“An anecdote. I am reminded, partly by the frank comradeship of this meeting to-night and partly, also, by the rapidity with which the time is passing by, that I am staying with one of the clergy of this city who is not very well known to me as yet;--although I find that to know almost any American is to love him as a friend--and who, perhaps, may therefore be a little surprised to-night if I return toward the small hours, as at present would seem to be my prospect. And that recalls to my mind an incident which I remember a good many years ago in my Cambridge life when I was present at a banquet given in the hall of St Peter’s College, Cambridge, in honor of its six hundredth anniversary. There were many illustrious members of the college present, and many and long speeches. I remember that it was half-past eleven o’clock at night when Sir Frederick Bramwell, the brother of the judge, was called upon to respond to ‘The Toast of the Applied Sciences.’ He said something of this kind: ‘Gentlemen, I could have conceived occasions when it would have been delightful to me to expatiate upon such a subject, but at this hour of the night the only application of science that appears to me to be appropriate to the moment is the application of the domestic lucifer to the bedroom candle.’ (Laughter.) Whereupon your ambassador, Mr Lowell, with that happy genius, that quick power of composition, and that delightful grace which were always so characteristic of him, wrote on the back of his menu card, and tossed across the table, these lines: “‘Oh, brief Sir Frederick, Who thy wit could catch, Hold thee a candle, Or find thy match?’” (Applause.)