President Lawrence, in presenting the guest of the evening, referred to his many titles to distinction. “If there be one thing more than another,” he said, in proposing Sir Edwin’s health, “which is worth preserving in connection with the Lotos Club, it is our boast, for more than a score of years, to strive to be among the first to welcome to New York men of genius from foreign lands. This joyous custom has brought to our club many happy moments--none more so than the present one. And so, when it became known that Sir Edwin Arnold was to visit our shores, it followed that the Lotos Club was to welcome him. As to his eminent graces of mind and heart, I need not remind you or any other English-speaking people thereof. “He is, perhaps, best known to us as a poet. I should not say ‘perhaps,’ but that his many estimable qualities confuse me. He, more than any other man, has brought us near Asia--that Asia of which we know so little. We hear it said that the Laureate is in his declining days. We hear it asked, ‘Who is to succeed him?’ Yet we know that the high standard of English poetry will not die while the author of ‘The Light of Asia’ lives. “But, gentlemen, it is not alone as a poet that we meet and greet him to-night; it is as a journalist as well. Well do we remember his services as a moulder of public opinion in England. It was he, on behalf of the London _Daily Telegraph_ and in connection with one of our own good Americans, who sent Stanley in search of Livingstone--all honor to that humane undertaking. As a poet, as a journalist, and as a scholar; as one who might talk to us, if he chose, in many mystical tongues, we welcome and we greet Sir Edwin Arnold.” The health of the club’s guest was drunk, everybody rising and cheering. He showed the deep impression made upon him as he gracefully bowed in acknowledgment of the cheers. His speech was one long to be remembered, both for the pleasing manner of delivery and for the apt and eloquent appropriateness of its matter. He said in part: “In rising to return my sincere thanks for the high honor done to me by this magnificent banquet, by its lavish opulence of welcome, by its goodly company, by the English so far too flattering which has been employed by the president, and by the generous warmth with which you have received my name, I should be wholly unable to sustain the heavy burden of my gratitude, but for a consideration of which I will presently speak. To-night must always be for me, indeed, a memorable occasion. Many a time and oft during the seven lustrums composing my life, I have had personal reason to rejoice at the splendid mistake committed by Christopher Columbus in discovering your now famous and powerful country.