readily forego any further remarks; and I close by bidding you farewell.

REMARKS AT THE ASTOR HOUSE, NEW YORK CITY, FEBRUARY 19, 1861

FELLOW-CITIZENS:--I have stepped before you merely in compliance with what
appears to be your wish, and not with the purpose of making a speech. I
do not propose making a speech this afternoon. I could not be heard by any
but a small fraction of you, at best; but, what is still worse than that,
I have nothing just now to say that is worthy of your hearing. I beg you
to believe that I do not now refuse to address you from any disposition to
disoblige you, but to the contrary. But, at the same time, I beg of you to
excuse me for the present.

ADDRESS AT NEW YORK CITY,

FEBRUARY 19, 1861

Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN:--I am rather an old man to avail myself of
such an excuse as I am now about to do. Yet the truth is so distinct, and
presses itself so distinctly upon me, that I cannot well avoid it--and
that is, that I did not understand when I was brought into this room that
I was to be brought here to make a speech. It was not intimated to me that
I was brought into the room where Daniel Webster and Henry Clay had made
speeches, and where one in my position might be expected to do something
like those men or say something worthy of myself or my audience. I
therefore beg you to make allowance for the circumstances in which I
have been by surprise brought before you. Now I have been in the habit
of thinking and sometimes speaking upon political questions that have for
some years past agitated the country; and, if I were disposed to do so,
and we could take up some one of the issues, as the lawyers call them, and
I were called upon to make an argument about it to the best of my ability,
I could do so without much preparation. But that is not what you desire to
have done here to-night.

I have been occupying a position, since the Presidential election, of
silence--of avoiding public speaking, of avoiding public writing. I have
been doing so because I thought, upon full consideration, that was the
proper course for me to take. I am brought before you now, and required
to make a speech, when you all approve more than anything else of the fact
that I have been keeping silence. And now it seems to me that the response
you give to that remark ought to justify me in closing just here. I
have not kept silence since the Presidential election from any party
wantonness, or from any indif