"The fact is known to you all, and I will not insist upon it, but it was Oliver Wendell Holmes who not only named, but who made the _Atlantic_. How did he do this? Oh, very simply! He merely invented a new kind of literature, something so beautiful and rare and fine that while you were trying to determine its character as monologue or colloquy, prose or poetry, philosophy or humor, it was gradually penetrating your consciousness with a sense that the best of all these had been fused in one--a perfect form, an exquisite wisdom, an unsurpassable grace. This, and much more than any poor words of mine can say, was the Autocrat, followed by the Professor, and then by the Poet, at the same Breakfast-Table. We pledge him by all these names to-day, not only with the wine in our cups, but with the pride and love in our hearts, where we have enshrined him immortally young, in spite of the birthdays that come and go, and where we defy the future that lies in wait for our precious things, to know his quality better, or value his genius more highly than we." Mrs. Julia Ward Howe was then called upon to respond to the toast, "The girls we have _not_ left behind us," and after a few words in reply, she read a fine poem in honor of the illustrious guest. Charles Dudley Warner was then introduced, and after a short speech, read a poem by H. H., "To Oliver Wendell Holmes, on his seventieth birthday." In these charming lines almost every poem of Doctor Holmes is mentioned with rare tact and skill. At the close of the poem, President Eliot of Harvard, rose and said: