The toast, I see, is not in its usual order to-night.  At public dinners this toast is habitually placed last on the list.  It seems to be a benevolent provision of the Committee on Toasts in order to give man in replying to Woman one chance at least in life of having the last word.  At the New England dinners, unfortunately the most fruitful subject of remark regarding woman is not so much her appearance as her disappearance.  I know that this was remedied a few years ago, when this grand annual gastronomic high carnival was held in the Metropolitan Concert Hall.  There, ladies were introduced into the galleries to grace the scene by their presence; and I am sure the experiment was sufficiently encouraging to warrant repetition, for it was beautiful to see the descendants of the Pilgrims sitting with eyes upturned in true Puritanic sanctity it was encouraging to see the sons of those pious sires devoting themselves, at least for one night, to setting their affections upon “things above.”

Woman’s first home was in the Garden of Eden.  There man first married woman.  Strange that the incident should have suggested to Milton the “Paradise Lost.”  Man was placed in a profound sleep, a rib was taken from his side, a woman was created from it, and she became his wife.  Evil-minded persons constantly tell us that thus man’s first sleep became his last repose.  But if woman be given at times to that contrariety of thought and perversity of mind which sometimes passeth our understanding, it must be recollected in her favor that she was created out of the crookedest part of man.

The Rabbins have a different theory regarding creation.  They go back to the time when we were all monkeys.  They insist that man was originally created with a kind of Darwinian tail, and that in the process of evolution this caudal appendage was removed and created into woman.  This might better account for those Caudle lectures which woman is in the habit of delivering, and some color is given to this theory, from the fact that husbands even down to the present day seem to inherit a general disposition to leave their wives behind.

The first woman, finding no other man in that garden except her own husband, took to flirting even with the Devil.  The race might have been saved much tribulation if Eden had been located in some calm and tranquil land—­like Ireland.  There would at least have been no snakes there to get into the garden.  Now woman in her thirst after knowledge, showed her true female inquisitiveness in her cross-examination of the serpent, and, in commemoration of that circumstance the serpent seems to have been curled up and used in nearly all languages as a sign of interrogation.  Soon the domestic troubles of our first parents began.  The first woman’s favorite son was killed with a club, and married women even to this day seem to have an instinctive horror of clubs.  The first woman learned that it was Cain that raised a club.