E. C. Stedman followed, paying a fine and appreciative tribute to his brother poet. President Seth Low referred to the connection of the guest of the evening with the cause of education, he having been at one time a college president. Paul Dana responded for the press. General Porter spoke as the all-round man of the world, soldier, statesman, and orator, in a speech full of wit, humor, anecdote, and hearty appreciation of the guest. St. Clair McKelway made one of his brilliant speeches, carrying the audience with him to the height of feeling and amusement rarely equalled. At the close of the banquet, Sir Edwin Arnold read his now-famous poem of “Potiphar’s Wife,” the manuscript of which he gave to the club as a souvenir of his visit. It is framed and hangs with his picture on the wall of the club house. This banquet will remain in the history of the literary events of New York one of the most notable; and as one of the brightest pages to be recorded in the annals of the Lotos Club. When we went to Philadelphia we were met at the Lafayette Hotel by John Russell Young, Henry Guy Carleton, and a number of newspaper men, among whom was Clark Davis, editor of the _Public Ledger_. It was an interesting evening. Sir Edwin read several poems, to the delight of reporters and friends present. The following day Sir Edwin Arnold, John Russell Young, and I went to Camden to call on the picturesque old poet Walt Whitman, who was living there in his own house. We were shown up a flight of stairs by the mistress of the house, to the bare front room, where, in the midst of a heap of newspapers, magazines, books, kindling wood, lamps, and old pictures, from one to six feet deep, the poet sat, in a high-backed chair, over which was thrown a goatskin robe, once white. The long hair of the poet and of the robe, and his great wide open shirt collar, made a picture unique beyond description. Back of his chair was a heap of newspapers which suggested the pile of cornstalks at an old-fashioned husking, where, when you husked the corn, the stalks and husks were thrown back over your shoulders until they formed a big stack. Walt had been accustomed to reading his morning papers and then throwing them back on this stack, until they had accumulated in this enormous mass fully as high as the back of his chair. That pile must have been the accumulation of several years.