When that great and generous soldier, U. S. Grant, gave back to Lee, crushed, but ever glorious, the sword he had surrendered at Appomattox, that magnanimous deed said to the people of the South: "You are our brothers." But when the present ruler of our grand republic on awakening to the condition of war that confronted him, with his first commission placed the leader's sword in the hands of those gallant confederate commanders, Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, he wrote between the lines in living letters of everlasting light the words: "There is but one people of this Union, one flag alone for all." The South, Mr. Toastmaster, will feel that her sons have been well given, that her blood has been well spilled, if that sentiment is to be indeed the true inspiration of our nation's future. God grant it may be as I believe it will. WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS THE "ATLANTIC" AND ITS CONTRIBUTORS [Speech of William Dean Howells, as editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," at the dinner given to John Greenleaf Whittier, at Boston, Mass., December 17, 1877, in celebration of the poet's seventieth birthday, and in celebration also of the twentieth year of the magazine.] GENTLEMEN, CONTRIBUTORS AND FRIENDS OF THE "ATLANTIC MONTHLY":--The serious moment has approached which sooner or later arrives at most banquets of the dinner-giving Anglo-Saxon race--a moment when each commensal, like the pampered sacrifice of the Aztecs, suddenly feels that the joys which have flattered him into forgetfulness of his fate are at an end, and that he must now gird himself for expiation. It is ordinarily a moment when the unprepared guest abandons himself to despair, and when even the more prophetic spirit finds memory forsaking it, or the treacherous ideas committed to paper withering away till the manuscript in the breast-pocket rustles sere and sad as the leaves of autumn. But let no one at this table be under a fearful apprehension. This were to little purpose an image of the great republic of letters, if the mind of any citizen might be invaded, and his right to hold his peace denied. Any gentleman being called upon and having nothing to say, can make his silent bow and sit down again without disfavor; he may even do so with a reasonable hope of applause. Reluctant orators, therefore, who are chafing under the dread of being summoned to stand and deliver an extorted eloquence, and who have already begun to meditate reprisals upon the person or the literature of the present speaker, may safely suspend their preparations; it shall not be his odious duty to molest them.