I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the
great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying
off. Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is
Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very
well myself.
Addressat A fair held at the Waldorf-Astoria,
new York, in
October,
1900, in aid of the orphans at Galveston
I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy
this place first and would speak to you, and in the
course of his remarks would drop a text for me to
talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is
proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties,
and he has not come here, and has not furnished me
with a text, and I am here without a text. I
have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome
faces, and —but I won’t continue
that, for I could go on forever about attractive faces,
beautiful dresses, and other things. But, after
all, compliments should be in order in a place like
this.
I have been in New York two or three days, and have
been in a condition of strict diligence night and
day, the object of this diligence being to regulate
the moral and political situation on this planet—put
it on a sound basis—and when you are regulating
the conditions of a planet it requires a great deal
of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you
have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also
in a position of corking. When I am situated
like that, with nothing to say, I feel as though I
were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part,
and please consider I am playing a part for want of
something better, and this, is not unfamiliar to me;
I have often done this before.
When I was here about eight years ago I was coming
up in a car of the elevated road. Very few people
were in that car, and on one end of it there was no
one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about
fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant
eye—a beautiful eye; and I took him from
his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had a
vocation. He had with him a very fine little
child of about four or five years. I was watching
the affection which existed between those two.
I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps. It
was really a pretty child, and I was admiring her,
and as soon as he saw I was admiring her he began
to notice me.
I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I
did what everybody else would do—admired
the child four times as much, knowing I would get
four times as much of his admiration. Things
went on very pleasantly. I was making my way
into his heart.
