He at once tells you you mustn’t build a fire in that chimney-place; that he knows the chimney will smoke; that if he had been there when it was built he could have shown you how to give a different sort of flare to the flue.  You go to read a chapter in the family Bible.  He tells you to drop that; that he has just written an enlarged and improved version, that can just put that old book to bed. [Laughter.] You think you are at least raising your children in general uprightness; but he tells you if you don’t go out at once and buy the latest patented article in the way of steel leg-braces and put on the baby, the baby will grow up bow-legged. [Laughter.] He intimates, before he leaves, that if he had been around to advise you before you were married, he could have got you a much better wife.  These are some of the things that reconcile a man to sudden death. [Continued laughter and applause.]

Such occurrences as these, and the fact of so many New Englanders being residents of this city and elsewhere, show that New England must be a good place—­to come from.

At the beginning of the war we thought we could shoot people rapidly enough to satisfy our consciences, with single-loading rifles; but along came the inventive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and Gatling guns, and magazine guns—­guns that carried a dozen shots at a time.  I didn’t wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this direction by a backwoods Virginian we captured one night.  The first remark he made was, “I would like to see one of them thar new-fangled weepons of yourn.  They tell me, sah, it’s a most remarkable eenstrument.  They say, sah, it’s a kind o’ repeatable, which you can load it up enough on Sunday to fiah it off all the rest of the week.” [Laughter.] Then there was every sort of new invention in the way of bayonets.  Our distinguished Secretary of State has expressed an opinion to-night that bayonets are bad things to sit down on.  Well, they are equally bad things to be tossed up on.  If he continues to hold up such terrors to the army, there will have to be important modifications in the uniform.  A soldier won’t know where to wear his breastplate. [Laughter.] But there have not only been inventions in the way of guns, but important inventions in the way of firing them.  In these days a man drops on his back, coils himself up, sticks up one foot, and fires off his gun over the top of his great toe.  It changes the whole stage business of battle.  It used to be the man who was shot, but now it is the man who shoots that falls on his back and turns up his toes. [Laughter and applause.] The consequence is, that the whole world wants American arms, and as soon as they get them they go to war to test them.  Russia and Turkey had no sooner bought a supply than they went to fighting.  Greece got a schooner-load, and, although she has not yet taken a part in the struggle, yet ever since the digging up of the lost limbs of the Venus of Milo, it has been feared that this may indicate a disposition on the part of Greece generally to take up arms. [Laughter and applause.]