music, and you sit down and weep.  You know that there is only one other instrument in the world that will produce such strains, and that is a steam piano on a Mississippi steamboat when the engineer is drunk.  And in this musical country they tell you in song about the “Lassies Comin’ Through the Rye;” but they never tell you about the rye that goes through the “laddies.”  And they will tell you in song about “bodies meeting bodies coming through the rye,” and you tell them that the practice is entirely un-American; that in America bodies usually are impressed with the solemnity of the occasion and the general propriety of the thing, and lie quiet until the arrival of the coroner, but that the coroners are disputing so much in regard to their jurisdiction, and so many delays occur in issuing burial permits, that, altogether, they are making the process so tedious and disagreeable that nowadays in America hardly anybody cares to die.  You tell them this in all seriousness, and you will see from their expression that they receive it in the same spirit. [Laughter.]

Then you go to England.  You have seen her colonies forming a belt around the circle of the earth, on which the sun never sets.  And now you have laid eyes on the mother-country, on which it appears the sun never rises.  Then you begin to compare legislative bodies, Parliament and Congress.  You find that in Parliament the members sit with their hats on and cough, while in Congress the members sit with their hats off and spit.  I believe that no international tribunal of competent jurisdiction has yet determined which nation has the advantage over the other in these little legislative amenities.  And, as you cross the English Channel, the last thing you see is the English soldier with his blue trousers and red coat, and the first you see on landing in France is the French soldier with his red trousers and blue coat, and you come to the conclusion that if you turn an English soldier upside down he is, uniformly speaking, a Frenchman. [Laughter.]

We could not tarry long in France; it was the ambition of my travelling companion to go to Holland, and upon his arrival there the boyish antics that were performed by my travelling companion in disporting himself upon the ancestral ground were one of the most touching and playful sights ever witnessed in the open air. [Laughter.] Nobody knows Mr. Depew who has not seen him among the Dutch.  He wanted especially to go to Holland, because he knew the Pilgrims had gone from there.  They did not start immediately from England to come here.  Before taking their leap across the ocean they stepped back on to Holland to get a good ready. [Laughter.] It is a country where water mingles with everything except gin—­a country that has been so effectually diked by the natives and damned by tourists. [Laughter.] There is one peculiar and especial advantage that you can enjoy in that country in going out to a banquet like this.  It is that rare and peculiar privilege which you cannot