Now, I have said that we are glad to have you see us.  You have already treated us to a very unique piece of work in this reception, and we are expecting perhaps that the world may be instructed after you are safely on the other side of the Atlantic in a more intimate and thorough manner concerning our merits and our few faults.  This faculty of laying on a dissecting board an entire nation or an entire age and finding out all the arteries and veins and pulsations of their life is an extension beyond any that our own medical schools afford.  You give us that knowledge of man which is practical and useful, and whatever the claims or the debates may be about your system or the system of those who agree with you, and however it may be compared with other competing systems that have preceded it, we must all agree that it is practical, that it is benevolent, that it is serious and that it is reverent; that it aims at the highest results in virtue; that it treats evil, not as eternal, but as evanescent, and that it expects to arrive at what is sought through the aid of the millennium—­that condition of affairs in which there is the highest morality and the greatest happiness.  And if we can come to that by these processes and these instructions, it matters little to the race whether it be called scientific morality and mathematical freedom or by another less pretentious name.  You will please fill your glasses while we propose the health of our guest, Herbert Spencer.

THE EMPIRE STATE[3]

MR. CHAUNCEY M. DEPEW

Mr. President and Gentlemen:—­It has been my lot from a time whence I can not remember to respond each year to this toast.  When I received the invitation from the committee, its originality and ingenuity astonished and overwhelmed me.  But there is one thing the committee took into consideration when they invited me to this platform.  This is a Presidential year, and it becomes men not to trust themselves talking on dangerous topics.  The State of New York is eminently safe.  Ever since the present able and distinguished Governor has held his place I have been called upon by the New England Society to respond for him.  It is probably due to that element in the New Englander that he delights in provoking controversy.  The Governor is a Democrat, and I am a Republican.  Whatever he believes in I detest; whatever he admires I hate.  The manner in which this toast is received leads me to believe that in the New England Society his administration is unanimously approved.  Governor Robinson, if I understand correctly his views, would rather that any other man should have been elected as Chief Magistrate than Mr. John Kelly.  Mr. Kelly, if I interpret aright his public utterances, would prefer any other man for the Governor of New York than Lucius Robinson, and therefore, in one of the most heated controversies we have ever had, we elected a Governor by unanimous consent or