MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--Eight years ago, to-night, there stood where I am standing now a young Georgian, who, not without reason, recognized the "significance" of his presence here--"the first southerner to speak at this board"--a circumstance, let me add, not very creditable to any of us--and in words whose eloquence I cannot hope to recall, appealed from the New South to New England for a united country. He was my disciple, my protege, my friend. He came to me from the southern schools, where he had perused the arts of oratory and letters, to get a few hints in journalism, as he said; needing so few, indeed, that, but a little later, I sent him to one of the foremost journalists of this foremost city, bearing a letter of introduction, which described him as "the greatest boy ever born in Dixie, or anywhere else." He is gone now. But, short as his life was, its heaven-born mission was fulfilled; the dream of his childhood was realized; for he had been appointed by God to carry a message of peace on earth, good-will to men, and, this done, he vanished from the sight of mortal eyes, even as the dove from the ark. I mean to take up the word where Grady left it off, but I shall continue the sentence with a somewhat larger confidence, and, perhaps, with a somewhat fuller meaning; because, notwithstanding the Puritan trappings, traditions, and associations which surround me--visible illustrations of the self-denying fortitude of the Puritan character and the sombre simplicity of the Puritan taste and habit--I never felt less out of place in all my life. To tell you the truth, I am afraid that I have gained access here on false pretences; for I am no Cavalier at all; just plain Scotch-Irish; one of those Scotch-Irish southerners who ate no fire in the green leaf and has eaten no dirt in the brown, and who, accepting, for the moment, the terms Puritan and Cavalier in the sense an effete sectionalism once sought to ascribe to them--descriptive labels at once classifying and separating North and South--verbal redoubts along that mythical line called Mason and Dixon, over which there were supposed by the extremists of other days to be no bridges--I am much disposed to say, "A plague o' both your houses!"