The Chairman said at the beginning that the best speeches were to be at the last. You have already discovered that this was designed for irony, for thus far the speeches have been incomparable, but mine is to be the beginning of the end. [Laughter and applause.] I know that what I say is true when I charge the Chairman with irony, for do not I feel his iron entering my soul? [Laughter and applause.] It is an act of considerable temerity, even though the ground has been so gracefully broken by the Rev. Dr. Chapin, for a clergyman to rise before this common-sense body of three hundred business men (unless we had you in our churches), for you well know that this precious quality of common sense is supposed to have its habitat almost entirely with business men, and rarely with the clergy. I know full well that the men of the pulpit are held to be wanting in practical knowledge, and that we know but little of the dark and devious ways of this naughty world. So that, rising here, I feel as if I were but a little one among a thousand, and yet I would venture to submit that the clergy are not wholly unpractical. Nay, I sometimes am led to think that the men of my cloth are the most practical, common-sense business men in the world. [Laughter and applause.] There is certainly no class of men who can make so little go so far, who can live so comfortably on such small incomes, who can fatten on pastures where the members of this Chamber of Commerce would starve. [Applause and laughter.] There is no class of men that go through life in such large proportion without bankruptcy. [Laughter and applause.] While 25,000 merchants in the United States during the four years from 1871 to 1875 failed in business, with liabilities amounting to $800,000,000 (I quote statistics from accepted authority), I do not believe that one-quarter of that number of clergymen failed [laughter and applause], or that their liabilities amounted to anything like that sum. [Laughter and applause.] I have seen the estimate that eighty-five per cent. of merchants fail within two years after they embark in business, notwithstanding their common sense, and that only three per cent, make more money in the long run than is enough for a comfortable livelihood. Having thus attempted to fortify my waning "Dutch courage" by an off-hand attack upon my hospitable entertainers, and having in some sense, even though it be Pickwickian, vindicated my cloth, let me go on for a moment and cut my garment according to it. [Laughter and applause.]