Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z
History
Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z
Speeches, addresses, etc.
I part from you with the conviction that such bonds of kindly
intercourse will cement the union between the two countries even more
than the wonderful cable, on which it is popularly believed in England
that my friend and host, Mr. Cyrus Field, passes his mysterious
existence appearing and reappearing at one and the same moment in London
and in New York. Of that unbroken union there seemed to me a likeness,
when on the beautiful shores of Lake George, the Loch Katrine of
America, I saw a maple and an oak-tree growing together from the same
stem, perhaps from the same root--the brilliant fiery maple, the emblem
of America; the gnarled and twisted oak, the emblem of England. So may
the two nations always rise together, so different each from each, and
representing so distinct a future, yet each springing from the same
ancestral root, each bound together by the same healthful sap, and the
same vigorous growth.
HENRY MORTON STANLEY
THROUGH THE DARK CONTINENT
[Speech of Henry M. Stanley at a dinner given in his honor by the
Lotos Club, New York City, November 27, 1886. Whitelaw Reid,
President of the Lotos Club, in welcoming Mr. Stanley, said: "Well,
gentlemen, your alarm of yesterday and last night was needless. The
Atlantic Ocean would not break even a dinner engagement for the man
whom the terrors of the Congo and the Nile could not turn back, and
your guest is here. [Applause.] It is fourteen years since you last
gave him welcome. Then he came to you fresh from the discovery of
Livingstone. The credulity which even doubted the records of that
adventurous march or the reality of his brilliant result had hardly
died out. Our young correspondent, after seeing the war end here
without his having a fair chance to win his spurs, had suddenly
made a wonderful hit out of the expedition which nobody had really
believed in and most people had laughed at. We were proud of him,
and right glad to see him, and a little bit uneasy, but vastly
amused over his peppery dealings with the Royal Geographers.
[Laughter.] In spite of our admiration for his pluck and his luck
we did not take him quite seriously. [Laughter.] In fact we did not
take anything very seriously in those days. The Lotos Club at first
was younger in that hearty enthusiastic reception to Stanley
fourteen years ago in that gay little clubhouse next to the Academy
of Music; we were thinking far more of a hearty greeting to the
comrade of the quill who had been having a hard time but had scored
'a big beat' [laughter] than of adequate recognition to the man
already well launched on a career that ranks him among the foremost
explorers of the century. [Loud cheers.] It is the character in
which you must welcome him now. The Royal Geographical Society has
no further doubt as to the credit to which he is entitled. He
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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