word, lest I should not be true to myself—­a terrible thing —­for his Joan of Arc, a book of chivalry, of nobility, and of manly sincerity for which I take this opportunity of thanking him.  But you can all drink this toast, each one of you with his own intention.  You can get into it what meaning you like.  Mark Twain is a man whom English and Americans do well to honor.  He is the true consolidator of nations.  His delightful humor is of the kind which dissipates and destroys national prejudices.  His truth and his honor, his love of truth, and his love of honor, overflow all boundaries.  He has made the world better by his presence.  We rejoice to see him here.  Long may he live to reap the plentiful harvest of hearty, honest human affection!”

Pilgrims, I desire first to thank those undergraduates of Oxford.  When a man has grown so old as I am, when he has reached the verge of seventy-two years, there is nothing that carries him back to the dreamland of his life, to his boyhood, like recognition of those young hearts up yonder.  And so I thank them out of my heart.  I desire to thank the Pilgrims of New York also for their kind notice and message which they have cabled over here.  Mr. Birrell says he does not know how he got here.  But he will be able to get away all right—­he has not drunk anything since he came here.  I am glad to know about those friends of his, Otway and Chatterton—­fresh, new names to me.  I am glad of the disposition he has shown to rescue them from the evils of poverty, and if they are still in London, I hope to have a talk with them.  For a while I thought he was going to tell us the effect which my book had upon his growing manhood.  I thought he was going to tell us how much that effect amounted to, and whether it really made him what he now is, but with the discretion born of Parliamentary experience he dodged that, and we do not know now whether he read the book or not.  He did that very neatly.  I could not do it any better myself.

My books have had effects, and very good ones, too, here and there, and some others not so good.  There is no doubt about that.  But I remember one monumental instance of it years and years ago.  Professor Norton, of Harvard, was over here, and when he came back to Boston I went out with Howells to call on him.  Norton was allied in some way by marriage with Darwin.

Mr. Norton was very gentle in what he had to say, and almost delicate, and he said:  “Mr. Clemens, I have been spending some time with Mr. Darwin in England, and I should like to tell you something connected with that visit.  You were the object of it, and I myself would have been very proud of it, but you may not be proud of it.  At any rate, I am going to tell you what it was, and to leave to you to regard it as you please.  Mr. Darwin took me up to his bedroom and pointed out certain things there-pitcher-plants, and so on, that he was measuring and watching from day to day—­and he said: