A mighty duty, sir, and a mighty inspiration impels every one of us to-night to lose in patriotic consecration whatever estranges, whatever divides. We, sir, are Americans--and we stand for human liberty! The uplifting force of the American idea is under every throne on earth. France, Brazil--these are our victories. To redeem the earth from kingcraft and oppression--this is our mission! And we shall not fail. God has sown in our soil the seed of His millennial harvest, and He will not lay the sickle to the ripening crop until His full and perfect day has come. Our history, sir, has been a constant and expanding miracle from Plymouth Rock and Jamestown all the way--aye, even from the hour when, from the voiceless and traceless ocean, a new world rose to the sight of the inspired sailor. As we approach the fourth centennial of that stupendous day--when the old world will come to marvel and to learn amid our gathered treasures--let us resolve to crown the miracles of our past with the spectacle of a Republic, compact, united, indissoluble in the bonds of love--loving from the lakes to the gulf--the wounds of war healed in every heart as on every hill, serene and resplendent at the summit of human achievement and earthly glory, blazing out the path and making clear the way up which all the nations of the earth must come in God's appointed time! [Great applause.] SARAH GRAND MERE MAN [Speech of Sarah Grand [Mrs. M'Fall] at the annual ladies' banquet of the Whitefriars Club, London, May 4, 1900. Max O'Rell [Paul Blouet] acted as chairman. L. F. Austin, who spoke earlier than Madame Grand, said, turning to Max O'Rell: "It used to be said of certain politicians by way of odium that they mumbled the dry bones of political economy; but you, sir, who sit trembling in that chair [laughter]--you are trying not to look it, but you are trembling with apprehension of the delicately anointed barb with which Madame Sarah. Grand will presently transfix you [laughter]; you must feel that we shall not very long be permitted even to mumble the barren epigrams of a vanished ascendancy."]