and God knows that this rivalry never severed the bonds of affection which united us, and so was founded what has since been styled the Mutual Admiration Society. Mutual Admiration Society! If we were to consider the number of books, dress-coats, gloves and other articles of more intimate character that were exchanged between us, it might more safely have been called the Society for Mutual Support. At all events, from the spectacle before me this evening I gather that this Society of Mutual Admiration, if admiration it must be termed, has taken a singular development since I had the honour of assisting so frequently at its meetings, and there is nothing surprising in this, since one of the most distinguished of the founders of this society, Mr. Faucher de St. Maurice, informed me the other day that the society in question was about to annex the French Academy. (Laughter.) But to be serious, allow me to recount another anecdote. There was a time, gentlemen, when our Mutual Admiration was far from being so ambitious as to dream of having a _succursale_ under the rotunda of the French Institute. But if our productions were meagre, our revenues were still more so, and famine often reigned in the chests of the confraternity. However we had our own days of abundance when there was corn in Egypt. The first Quebecer who understood that poetry, unlike perpetual motion, could not feed itself, was a brewer, whose memory is now legendary and who was known by the harmonious name of McCallum. Arthur Casgrain, who in a couple of years afterwards we sorrowfully bore to the cemetery, had thought of composing an Epic on the Grand Trunk. This was called "La grande Tronciade!" Well in one of the twelve parts of this production, so very original, there were three remarkable lines. "Buvons, buvons, amis, de ce bon maccallome, Venant directement du brasseur qu'il dénome! C'est ça qui vous retape et vous refait un homme?"