MR. CHAIRMAN:--I have the honor to propose the toast of "Mere Man" [laughter], but why "Mere Man," I want to know? After all that has been said this evening so truthfully on the subject of "Sovran Woman," it is impossible for me to use such an epithet without feeling myself in an invidious position, in the position of the dog that bites the hand which has just caressed it--or rather I should feel myself in that position if I were in any way responsible for the use of the ungracious word. I beg most emphatically to state that I am not in any way responsible for it. I decline to be identified with such an expression: I decline to be accused of calling man any names [laughter], any names that I have not already called him. [Laughter.] I do not decline out of consideration for mere man altogether, but in self-defence. To use such an expression deprives me of any dignity which I might myself derive from the dignity of my subject. Besides, the words in my mouth, were I to be identified with them, would be used against me as a bomb by a whole section of the press, to blow me up. [Laughter.] I object to be blown up for nothing by a whole section of the press. [Laughter.] That is the sort of thing which almost ruffles my equanimity. My comfort is, that no one can accuse me of having originated such an expression, because it is well known no woman ever originated anything. [Laughter.] I assure you I have seen it so stated in print; and in one article I read on the subject the perturbation of the writer, lest there should be any mistake about it, so agitated his grammar that it was impossible to parse it. I should like to know who was responsible in the first place for the expression which has been imposed upon me. It seems to me there is strong presumptive evidence that it was by man himself that man was dubbed mere man. If the lords of creation choose to masquerade sometimes as mere man by all means let them.