FELLOW-CITIZENS,--I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this very kind welcome I have received at your hands to-night on coming upon the platform. I assure you, gentlemen, if I felt at liberty to waste the precious hours of this evening upon any thing relating to myself, I could say much more than I do to thank you for your great kindness. But, gentlemen, we are met here on public business. You have heard what we are asked to do. We are asked to petition the city government, and send a committee of force to the city government (not as if the government were at all reluctant, but that they may know the feeling of the people of Boston), and ask the city government to go to work at once, and see that Boston has, as soon as possible, these necessities for her honor, her health, and her beauty. [Applause.] In thinking of this subject, Mr. President and gentlemen, it occurred to me that it was a very singular fact, and not altogether to the credit of human nature, that great numbers of persons cannot live together without extreme inconvenience. Now, Robinson Crusoe, when he lived on the Island of Juan Fernandez alone, was not troubled with any question of public parks, or drainage, or health. Things took care of themselves. But when you get two or three or four hundred thousand Robinson Crusoes in a few square miles, you find the whole state of things is reversed, that you require all the patience, all the science, a large part of the money, and a large part of the industry, of the population, that you may live at all, and on any terms. The lower parts of our nature, the animal parts, tend to produce certain results which the intellectual parts are expected to meet and control. If they do not that, men become savages; if they do, they are enlightened. Now, in this great and enlightened city of Boston, the pride of us all, the "Athens of America," as we all know we are [laughter], and, as our friend Dr. HOLMES there has told us, the "Hub of the Universe" [laughter], it would hardly be respectful to say that one of the questions before us was, Which of those two roads we were going to take,--whether we were going to let the intellectual and moral parts have the upper hand, or whether we were going to sink beneath the material part. And yet, gentlemen, that is a good deal the question that is before us to-night.