At that time the Admiral and myself did not have the
facilities of advertising that you have.
I have known Admiral Harrington in all kinds of situations—in
public service, on the platform, and in the chain-gang
now and then—but it was a mistake.
A case of mistaken identity. I do not think
it is at all a necessity to tell you Admiral Harrington’s
public history. You know that it is in the histories.
I am not here to tell you anything about his public
life, but to expose his private life.
I am something of a poet. When the great poet
laureate, Tennyson, died, and I found that the place
was open, I tried to get it—but I did not
get it. Anybody can write the first line of
a poem, but it is a very difficult task to make the
second line rhyme with the first. When I was
down in Australia there were two towns named Johnswood
and Par-am. I made this rhyme:
“The
people of Johnswood are pious and good;
The
people of Par-am they don’t care a——.”
I do not want to compliment Admiral Harrington, but
as long as such men as he devote their lives to the
public service the credit of the country will never
cease. I will say that the same high qualities,
the same moral and intellectual attainments, the same
graciousness of manner, of conduct, of observation,
and expression have caused Admiral Harrington to be
mistaken for me—and I have been mistaken
for him.
A mutual compliment can go no further, and I now have
the honor and privilege of introducing to you Admiral
Harrington.
Addressat the first formal dinner
in the new club-house,
November
11, 1893
In
introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence
said:
“To-night the old faces
appear once more amid new surroundings. The
place where last we met about the table has vanished,
and to-night we have our first Lotos dinner
in a home that is all our own. It
is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be
spread in honor of one who has been a member
of the club for full a score of years, and
it is a happy augury for the future that
our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should
be the bearer of a most distinguished name
in the world of letters; for the Lotos Club
is ever at its best when paying homage to genius
in literature or in art. Is there a civilized
being who has not heard the name of Mark
Twain? We knew him long years ago,
before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of
wit and eloquence, with no reverence for
anything, and went abroad to educate the
untutored European in the subtleties of the American
joke. The world has looked on and applauded while
he has broken many images. He has
led us in imagination all over the globe.
