“Good-night, Major,” said Anthony Hope; “you Americans are too much for us Englishmen.” I think the last speech that Mr. Hawkins made in New York was at a public dinner given him by the Lotos Club, which is the most famous of all our American clubs for its receptions and dinners to men of letters. On this occasion he said: “Mr. President and Gentlemen:--I am too well aware of the history of your club and of the distinction of the guests whom you have entertained before, not to rise on this occasion with perhaps more than usual--shall I say trepidation or discomfort?--which possesses an after-dinner speaker. I have received here to-night an appreciation which would have been wholly delightful if I were not persistently haunted with the idea that it is too excessively indulgent. “As I crossed the Atlantic Ocean, feeling less at ease than I usually do on land, an intelligent sailor came up to me and told me that we were in the Gulf Stream. The consolation was slight, because the Gulf Stream seemed to me as turbulent as any other part of the ocean. But it has occurred to me since, that he spoke, as it were, in a metaphor, and that what he really referred to was the gulf stream that flows between here and England; of the gulf stream of sympathy which unites the two countries, and which, unlike the merely physical and uncomfortable stream, flows both ways, from us to you and from you to us. (Applause.) “It is indeed, in a way, strange for an Englishman to make his first visit to this country. I was asked by a cynical friend before I started why I was going, and he referred not obscurely to the hopes I entertained of paying my expenses. (Laughter.) “Well, gentlemen, the ancient epigram forbids us to say that it is necessary to live; but I am still among those who consider that it is desirable. (Laughter.) I agree with a clergyman in my own country who said that the Scriptures teach that the laborer is worthy of his hire, but that, for his part, he thought it ought to be paid free of income tax. (Laughter.) “But that was not the sort, not exclusively the sort, of American gold which was in my mind; and if it had been when I started, I should before now have found out my mistake. Better than that, gentlemen, is the gold of your cordial reception, which still sits on my heart as too much undeserved. “But to come here is indeed, in the old phrase, the experience of a lifetime. It has been my fate--I don’t know whether you will be surprised about it--to be asked quite three or four times already what were my impressions of America. (Laughter.) When in Quarantine I was asked first; and my only impression then was that I should never get here. I was asked again at the landing, when my sole feeling was that I was very glad to get here. (Laughter and applause.)