“The question I have not yet answered. It is difficult to answer. One comes to a country that is unfamiliar, and yet not strange; that is new, and yet recalls every moment the things that are old; that is foreign, and yet is distinct with a separate, individual, and proud nationality. (Applause.) “And as with your nationality, so, if I may say so, it seems to me, with your literature. It has its roots where our literature has; but patriotic as I am, I must admit that a brighter sun has shone upon it, copious rain has nourished it, it has its own fruit and its own flavor; and thus it enhances and glorifies the English language, in which both itself and our literature on the other side of the Atlantic are expressed. (Applause.) “It is far from my desire to speak to you long to-night, but it is impossible for me to sit down, without at least trying to say to you how very deeply I feel the generosity and the kindness of this greeting, and to say also how I have felt for years back the kindness and the readiness with which the public of America greets us English writers. (Applause.) “We come here with no credentials save that our country has played in the past a part which our country would not repeat in the future. (Applause.) But if you do not forget that--and perhaps you do not forget it--you are at least willing to forgive it; and as members of the same family, we remember, not the occasions on which every now and then, perhaps from living too close together, we fell out, but rather the time when we made friends again and celebrated the event by a cordial dinner. (Applause.) “Gentlemen, I thank you.” (Loud and continued applause.) From October 17, 1897, to January 13th following, Mr. Hawkins and I travelled together, visiting sixty different cities, and he gave seventy-six readings. He saw the face of America’s book-loving public. He spent Christmas at my home, making it a memorable day in our household. On New Year’s day, in company with his publisher, Mr. Fred. A. Stokes, John S. Wise, and his son, of Virginia, Mr. William Carey of the _Century Magazine_, and Mr. George F. Foster of Stokes & Co., and _me too_, Mr. Hawkins was given a Chinese dinner in Mott Street, the Chinese quarters of New York. The menu was in Chinese hieroglyphics, and as far as any of us could tell the dinner was as much hieroglyphic as the menu. The host, Mr. Stokes, had anticipated the inability of the party to make out or digest the Oriental spread, and took with him a satchel filled with sandwiches, cigars, and a canteen or two of _pure_ water, and this, with the stories, supplied the necessaries of the day and occasion, both of which are not easy to forget, for the delight they gave. Since Mr. Hawkins’ return to England we have frequently corresponded, and many of the letters that I have received from him illustrate so well the genial spirit of the man that I take the liberty of reproducing a few of them by his kind permission.