I have noticed that Americans have a desire to go to Europe, and I have observed, especially, that those who have certain ambitions with regard to public life think that they ought to cross the ocean; that crossing the water will add to their public reputations, particularly when they think how it added to the reputation of George Washington even crossing the Delaware River. [Laughter and applause.] The process is very simple.  You get aboard a steamer, and when you get out of sight of land you suddenly realize that the ship has taken up seriously its corkscrew career through the sea.  Certain gastronomic uncertainties follow.  You are sailing under the British flag.  You always knew that “Britannia ruled the waves;” but the only trouble with her now is that she don’t appear to rule them straight. [Laughter.] Then you lean up against the rail; soon you begin to look about as much discouraged as a Brooklyn Alderman in contempt of court.  Your more experienced and sympathizing friends tell you that it will soon pass over, and it does.  You even try to beguile your misery with pleasant recollections of Shakespeare.  The only line that seems to come to your memory is the advice of Lady Macbeth—­“To bed, to bed!”—­and when you are tucked away in your berth and the ship is rolling at its worst, your more advisory friends look in upon you, and they give you plenty of that economical advice that was given to Joseph’s brother, not to “fall out by the way.” [Laughter.]

For several days you find your stomach is about in the condition of the tariff question in the present Congress—­likely to come up any minute.  This is particularly hard upon those who had been brought up in the army, whose previous experience in this direction had been confined entirely to throwing up earthworks. [Laughter.] You begin to realize how naval officers sometimes have even gone so far as to throw up their commissions.  If Mr. Choate had seen Mr. Depew and myself under these circumstances he would not have made those disparaging remarks which he uttered to-night about the engorgement of our stomachs.  If he had turned those stomachs wrong side out and gazed upon their inner walls through that opera-glass with which he has been looking so intently lately upon Mrs. Langtry, he would have found that there was not even the undigested corner of a carbuncular potato to stop the pyloric orifice; he would have found upon those inner walls not a morsel of those things which perish with using. [Laughter.]

But Mr. Choate must have his joke.  He is a professional lawyer, and I have frequently observed that lawyers’ jokes are like an undertaker’s griefs—­strictly professional.  You begin now to sympathize with everybody that ever went to sea.  You think of the Pilgrim Fathers during the tempestuous voyage in the Mayflower.  You reflect how fully their throats must have been occupied, and you can see how they originated the practice of speaking through their noses. [Great laughter and applause.] Why, you will