In respectfully proposing the memory of his great-great-grandmother [laughter], I am speaking of one whom few if any of you can remember. [Laughter.] Yet her face is as familiar to me as that of any member of my household. She looks upon me as I sit at my writing-table; she does not smile, she does not speak; even the green parrot on her hand has never opened his beak; but there she is, calm, unchanging, in her immortal youth, as when the untutored artist fixed her features on the canvas. To think that one little word from the lips of Dorothy Quincy, your great-great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, decided the question whether you and I should be here to-night [laughter], in fact whether we should be anywhere [laughter] at all, or remain two bodiless dreams of nature! But it was Dorothy Quincy's "Yes" or "No" to Edward Jackson which was to settle that important matter--important to both of us, certainly--yes, Your Honor; and I can say truly, as I look at you and remember your career, important to this and the whole American community. [Applause.] The picture I referred to is but a rude one, and yet I was not ashamed of it when I wrote a copy of verses about it, three or four of which this audience will listen to for the sake of Dorothy's great-grandson. I must alter the pronouns a little, for this occasion only:-- Look not on her with eyes of scorn-- Dorothy Q. was a lady born; Ay! since the galloping Normans came England's annals have known her name; And still to the three-hilled rebel town Dear is that ancient name's renown, For many a civic wreath they won, The youthful sire and the gray-haired son. O damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift (we) owe to you! Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring-- All (our) tenure of heart and hand, All (our) title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life! What if a hundred years ago Those close-shut lips had answered "No!" When forth the tremulous question came That cost the maiden her Norman name, And under the folds that look so still The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill-- Should (we) be (we), or could it be One-tenth (two others) and nine-tenths (we)? Soft is the breath of a maiden's Yes: Not the light gossamer stirs with less; But never a cable that holds so fast Through all the battles of wave and blast, And never an echo of speech or song That lives in the babbling air so long! There were tones in the voice that whispered then You may hear to-day in a hundred men. O lady and lover, now faint and far Your images hover--and here we are, Solid and stirring in flesh and bone-- Edwards and Dorothys--all their own-- A goodly record for time to show Of a syllable whispered so long ago. [Applause prolonged.]