MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I greatly regret my inability to respond to the very flattering recognition of the part played by Spain in the early history of this territory. I wish I were endowed with the same eloquence displayed by previous orators, which it has been our privilege to listen to and admire. Still, had not the national glories of Spain been so brilliantly alluded to, were I able to recall them now with colors as glowing as the warmth their memory brings to my Spanish heart, I feel I could not raise to them a loftier or more eloquent monument than has been raised by those immortal works of Washington Irving, Prescott, Lowell, and Ticknor, which have made of Spanish tradition a familiar household patrimony of this nation. I am sure you will agree with me in thinking that I could do no better, that I could not pay a higher nor more honorable nor lasting tribute to our share in the history of this continent than by invoking the testimony of your own literary genius and by referring now to that grateful recognition which moved the founders of this Republic to associate the revered memory of Isabella, the soul-stirring deeds of Pizarro, Cortez, and Ojeda, with the temple of your nationality. If ever the engrossing conclusions of your wonderful actual prosperity, the intensity of your life, made one of your strenuous citizens forget what your present owes to your past, let him ascend the steps of your national capitol, let him pause before its majestic gates, and there he will behold, carved in bronze on the threshold of your proudest monument, the effigies and the names of those Spanish heroes who discovered, conquered, and pointed to you the way in which path you have so successfully followed. As a guest, sitting now for the first time at the hearth of the American nation, I feel bound to respond to that high tribute made to Spain by publicly acknowledging here the enviable kindness shown by all classes of your people since I landed on your shores. As the representative of the nation whose ancient and honored flag was the first to be reflected in the majestic course of the father of American rivers, I am happy to feel that my first official appearance before an American audience is associated in both your minds and mine with the commemoration of an event which, although involving far-reaching issues in the respective histories of three great nations, has not and never was darkened by the rankling memories which war and international strife always leave in their wake.