over one route and comes back another season over another route,
so that a man who goes to Europe one season and comes back another is
treated to another change of scenery along the entire route. [Laughter.]

As I said, we thought it was the thing for Republicans to come home to
vote. At the polls we found it was rather the thing for them to stay
away. But we acted upon that impulse which often seizes upon the human
breast--the desire to come home to die. I never for one moment realized
the overwhelming defeat that we were going to suffer until one day Mr.
Choate confided to me his determination to speak for the Citizens'
candidate. [Loud laughter.] And this left us the day after that election
and left the other members of our party standing around the highways and
byways with that one supplication upon each one's lips: "Lord, be
merciful unto me a Republican and a sinner." [Loud applause and
laughter.]

* * * * *

WOMAN

[Speech of Horace Porter at the seventy-eighth annual dinner of the
New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1883. The
President, Marvelle W. Cooper, in introducing the speaker, arose,
mentioned the single word "Woman"--and said: "This toast will be
responded to by one whom you know well, General Horace Porter."]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--When this toast was proposed to
me, I insisted that it ought to be responded to by a bachelor, by some
one who is known as a ladies' man; but in these days of female
proprietorship it is supposed that a married person is more essentially
a ladies' man than anybody else, and it was thought that only one who
had had the courage to address a lady could have the courage, under
these circumstances, to address the New England Society. [Laughter.]

The toast, I see, is not in its usual order to-night. At public dinners
this toast is habitually placed last on the list. It seems to be a
benevolent provision of the Committee on Toasts in order to give man in
replying to Woman one chance at least in life of having the last word.
[Laughter.] At the New England dinners, unfortunately the most fruitful
subject of remark regarding woman is not so much her appearance as her
disappearance. I know that this was remedied a few years ago, when this
grand annual gastronomic high carnival was held in the Metropolitan
Concert Hall. There ladies were introduced into the galleries to grace
the scene by