The Venetian on his return home, journeyed out of the East, westward.  Our Marco Polo on his return home, journeyed out of the west, eastward; and yet they both came from the same region.  Their common starting-point was Peking.  This change is typical of that transcendent revolution under whose influence the Orient will become the Occident.  Journeying westward, the first welcome is from the nations of Europe.  Journeying eastward, the first welcome is from our Republic.  It only remains that this welcome should be extended until it opens a pathway for the mightiest commerce of the world, and embraces within the sphere of American activity that ancient ancestral empire, where population, industry and education, on an unprecedented scale, create resources and necessities on an unprecedented scale also.  See to it, merchants of the United States, and you, merchants of Boston, that this opportunity is not lost.

And this brings me, Mr. Mayor, to the treaty, which you invited me to discuss.  But I will not now enter upon this topic.  If you did not call me to order for speaking too long, I fear I should be called to order in another place for undertaking to speak of a treaty which has not yet been proclaimed by the President.  One remark I will make and take the consequences.  The treaty does not propose much; but it is an excellent beginning, and, I trust, through the good offices of our fellow-citizen, the honored plenipotentiary, will unlock those great Chinese gates which have been bolted and barred for long centuries.  The embassy is more than the treaty, because it will prepare the way for further intercourse and will help that new order of things which is among the promises of the future.

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THE QUALITIES THAT WIN

[Speech of Charles Sumner at the sixty-eighth annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1873.  The President, Isaac H. Bailey, in proposing the toast, “The Senate of the United States,” said:  “We are happy to greet on this occasion the senior in consecutive service, and the most eminent member of the Senate, whose early, varied, and distinguished services in the cause of freedom have made his name a household word throughout the world—­the Honorable Charles Sumner.”  On rising to respond, Mr. Sumner was received with loud applause.  The members of the Society rose to their feet, applauded and waved handkerchiefs.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND BROTHERS OF NEW ENGLAND:—­For the first time in my life I have the good fortune to enjoy this famous anniversary festival.  Though often honored by your most tempting invitation, and longing to celebrate the day in this goodly company of which all have heard so much, I could never excuse myself from duties in another place.  If now I yield to well-known attractions, and journey from Washington for my first holiday during a protracted public service, it is because all was enhanced by the appeal of your excellent president, to whom I am bound by the friendship of many years in Boston, in New York, and in a foreign land. [Applause.] It is much to be a brother of New England, but it is more to be a friend [applause], and this tie I have pleasure in confessing to-night.