y courteous, even courtly. They brought that hat back to
me presently very sleek and nice, and I asked how much there was to
pay. They replied that they did not charge the clergy anything. I have
cherished the delight of that moment from that day to this. It was the
first thing I did the other day to go and hunt up that shop and hand in
my hat to have it ironed. I said when it came back, "How much to
pay?" They said, "Ninepence." In seven years I have acquired all that
worldliness, and I am sorry to be back where I was seven years ago.

But now I am chaffing and chaffing and chaffing here, and I hope
you will forgive me for that; but when a man stands on the verge of
seventy-two you know perfectly well that he never reached that place
without knowing what this life is heart-breaking bereavement. And so our
reverence is for our dead. We do not forget them; but our duty is toward
the living; and if we can be cheerful, cheerful in spirit, cheerful in
speech and in hope, that is a benefit to those who are around us.

My own history includes an incident which will always connect me with
England in a pathetic way, for when I arrived here seven years ago with
my wife and my daughter--we had gone around the globe lecturing to
raise money to clear off a debt--my wife and one of my daughters started
across the ocean to bring to England our eldest daughter. She was twenty
four years of age and in the bloom of young womanhood, and we were
unsuspecting. When my wife and daughter--and my wife has passed from
this life since--when they had reached mid Atlantic, a cablegram--one
of those heartbreaking cablegrams which we all in our days have to
experience--was put into my hand. It stated that that daughter of
ours had gone to her long sleep. And so, as I say, I cannot always be
cheerful, and I cannot always be chaffing; I must sometimes lay the
cap and bells aside, and recognize that I am of the human race like the
rest, and must have my cares and griefs. And therefore I noticed what
Mr. Birrell said--I was so glad to hear him say it--something that was
in the nature of these verses here at the top of this:

"He lit our life with shafts of sun
And vanquished pain.
Thus two great nations stand as one
In honoring Twain."

I am very glad to have those verses. I am very glad and very grateful
for what Mr. Birrell said in that connection. I have received since
I have been here,