The King of the Belgians commissioned me to go to that country.  My expedition when we started from the coast numbered 300 colored people and fourteen Europeans.  We returned with 3,000 trained black men and 300 Europeans.  The first sum allowed me was $50,000 a year, but it has ended at something like $700,000 a year.  Thus, you see, the progress of civilization.  We found the Congo, having only canoes.  To-day there are eight steamers.  It was said at first that King Leopold was a dreamer.  He dreamed he could unite the barbarians of Africa into a confederacy and called it the Free State, but on February 25, 1885, the Powers of Europe and America also ratified an act, recognizing the territories acquired by us to be the free and independent State of the Congo.  Perhaps when the members of the Lotos Club have reflected a little more upon the value of what Livingstone and Leopold have been doing, they will also agree that these men have done their duty in this world and in the age that they lived, and that their labor has not been in vain on account of the great sacrifices they have made to the benighted millions of dark Africa. [Loud and enthusiastic applause.]

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN

TRIBUTE TO RICHARD HENRY STODDARD

     [Speech of Edmund Clarence Stedman as chairman of the dinner given
     by the Authors’ Club to Richard Henry Stoddard, New York City,
     March 26, 1897.]

GENTLEMEN:—­The members of the Authors’ Club are closely associated to-night with many other citizens in a sentiment felt by one and all—­that of love and reverence for the chief guest of the evening.  He has our common pride in his fame.  He has what is, I think, of even more value to him, our entire affection.  We have heard something of late concerning the “banquet habit,” and there are banquets which make it seem to the point.  But there are also occasions which transfigure even custom, and make it honored “in the observance.”  Nor is this a feast of the habitual kind, as concerns its givers, its recipient, and the city in which it is given.  The Authors’ Club, with many festivals counted in its private annals, now, for the first time, offers a public tribute to one of its own number; in this case, one upon whom it long since conferred a promotion to honorary membership.  As for New York, warder of the gates of the ocean, and by instinct and tradition first to welcome the nation’s visitors, it constantly offers bread and salt—­yes, and speeches—­to authors, as to other guests, from older lands, and many of us often have joined in this function.  But we do not remember that it has been a habit for New York to tender either the oratorical bane or the gustatory antidote to her own writers.  Except within the shade of their own coverts they have escaped these offerings, unless there has been something other than literary service to bring them public recognition.  In the latter