[Speech of William S. Gilbert at a dinner given to him and to Sir Arthur Sullivan by the Lotos Club, New York City, November 8, 1879. Whitelaw Reid, the President, in introducing Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Sullivan, said: "We do not welcome them as men of genius. It sometimes happens that men of genius do not deserve welcome. But we do greet them as men who have used their undoubted genius to increase the happiness of their kind [applause]; men whose success has extended throughout the nations and has added bright hours to the life of every man and woman it has touched. [Applause.] That success has depended on no unworthy means. Respecting themselves and their art, they have always respected their audiences. They have so married wit and humor, and a most delicate fancy, and the best light music of the time, to the public temper, that we have seen here in New York, for example, their piece so popular that we hadn't theatres enough in town to hold the people who simultaneously and unanimously wanted to hear it. I propose first the health of a gentleman who, not merely in the piece that has so long been the rage of the town, but in a brilliant series of previous successes, has always given us wit without dirt [applause]--a drama in which the hero is not a rake, and the heroine is not perpetually posing and poising between innocence and adultery."] MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--As my friend Sullivan and I were driving to this Club this evening, both of us being very nervous and very sensitive, and both of us men who are highly conscious of our oratorical defects and deficiencies, and having before us vividly the ordeal awaiting us, we cast about for a comparison of our then condition. We likened ourselves to two authors driving down to a theatre at which a play of theirs was to be played for the first time. The thought was somewhat harassing, but we dismissed it, because we remembered that there was always an even chance of success [laughter], whereas in the performance in which we were about to take part there was no prospect of aught but humiliating failure.