Alas! my birds, you wisdom want Of perils you are ignorant; Ofttimes in grass, on trees, in flight, Sore accidents on you may light; Oh, to your safety have an eye, So happy may you live and die. "In accepting your kind invitation, I confess that I was ignorant of my perils. I did not follow the counsel of my grandmamma with the four g's in having an eye to my own safety. For I fear that if I had dreamed of being called on to answer for American literature, one of those 'previous engagements,' which crop out so opportunely, would have stood between me and my present trying position. I had meant, if called upon, to say a few words about a Japanese youth who studied law in Boston, a very cultivated and singularly charming young person, who died not very long after his return to his native country. Some of you may remember young Enouie--I am not sure that I spell it rightly, and I know that I cannot pronounce it properly; for from his own lips it was as soft as an angel's whisper. His intelligence, his delicate breeding, the loveliness of his character, captivated all who knew him. We loved him, and we mourned for him as if he had been a child of our own soil. But of him I must say no more. "In speaking of American literature we naturally think first of our historical efforts. We see that books hold but a small part of American history. The axe and the ploughshare are the two pens with which our New World annals have been principally written, with schoolhouses as notes of interrogation, and steeples as exclamation points of pious adoration and gratitude. Within half a century the railroad has ruled our broad page all over, and rewritten the story, with States for new chapters and cities for paragraphs. This is the kind of history which he who runs may read, and he must run fast and far if he means to read any considerable part of it. "But we must not forget our political history, perishable in great measure as to its form, long enduring in its results. This literature is the index of our progress--in both directions--forward and the contrary. From the days of Washington and Franklin to the times still fresh in our memory, from the Declaration of Independence to the proclamation which enfranchised the colored race, our political literature, with all its terrible blunders and short-comings, has been, after all, the fairest expression the world has yet seen of what a free people and a free press have to say and to show for themselves.