GENTLEMEN:—­It is somewhat to a modest man’s embarrassment, on rising to this toast, to know that it has already been twice partially spoken to this evening—­first by my friend, Senator Lane from Indiana, and just now, most eloquently, by the mayor-elect of New York [John T. Hoffman], who could not utter a better word in his own praise than to tell us that he married a Massachusetts wife. [Applause.] In choosing the most proper spot on this platform as my standpoint for such remarks as are appropriate to such a toast, my first impulse was to go to the other end of the table; for hereafter, Mr. Chairman, when you are in want of a man to speak for Woman, remember what Hamlet said, “Bring me the recorder!"[7] [Laughter.] But, on the other hand, here, at this end, a prior claim was put in from the State of Indiana, whose venerable Senator [Henry S. Lane] has expressed himself disappointed at finding no women present.  So, as my toast introduces that sex, I feel bound to stand at the Senator’s end of the room—­not, however, too near the Senator’s chair, for it may be dangerous to take Woman too near that “good-looking man.” [Laughter and applause.] Therefore, gentlemen, I stand between these two chairs—­the Army on my right [General Hancock], the Navy on my left [Admiral Farragut]—­to hold over their heads a name that conquers both—­Woman! [Applause.] The Chairman has pictured a vice-admiral tied for a little while to a mast; but it is the spirit of my sentiment to give you a vice-admiral tied life-long to a master. [Applause.] In the absence of woman, therefore, from this gilded feast, I summon her to your golden remembrance.  There is an old English song—­older, sir, than the Pilgrims:—­

  “By absence, this good means I gain,
  That I can catch her
  Where none can watch her,
  In some close corner of my brain: 
  There I embrace and kiss her: 
  And so I both enjoy and miss her!”

You must not forget, Mr. President, in eulogizing the early men of New England, who are your clients to-night, that it was only through the help of the early women of New England, who are mine, that your boasted heroes could ever have earned their title of the Pilgrim Fathers. [Great laughter.] A health, therefore, to the women in the cabin of the Mayflower!  A cluster of May-flowers themselves, transplanted from summer in the old world to winter in the new!  Counting over those matrons and maidens, they numbered, all told, just eighteen.  Their names are now written among the heroines of history!  For as over the ashes of Cornelia stood the epitaph “The Mother of the Gracchi,” so over these women of the Pilgrimage we write as proudly “The Mothers of the Republic.” [Applause.] There was good Mistress Bradford, whose feet were not allowed of God to kiss Plymouth Rock, and who, like Moses, came only near enough to see but not to enter the Promised Land.  She was washed overboard from the deck—­and to this day the sea is her grave and Cape Cod her