imony, and it is very evident that this one
ought to have preceded the other. [Laughter and applause.] Eighth
regular toast, 'Truth and Trade: those whom God hath joined
together, let no man put asunder.'"]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--It were an ambitious effort to
hold the attention of this distinguished body directly after its ears
had been ravished by the eloquent deliverances of the finished orators
who have just preceded me. In fact, I can scarcely imagine why you
enlist another voice from Brooklyn, unless it be to show that there is a
possibility of exhausting Brooklyn, and you would make it my sad office
to afford you the illustration. [Applause.]

The Chairman said at the beginning that the best speeches were to be at
the last. You have already discovered that this was designed for irony,
for thus far the speeches have been incomparable, but mine is to be the
beginning of the end. [Laughter and applause.]

I know that what I say is true when I charge the Chairman with irony,
for do not I feel his iron entering my soul? [Laughter and applause.] It
is an act of considerable temerity, even though the ground has been so
gracefully broken by the Rev. Dr. Chapin, for a clergyman to rise
before this common-sense body of three hundred business men (unless we
had you in our churches), for you well know that this precious quality
of common sense is supposed to have its habitat almost entirely with
business men, and rarely with the clergy.

I know full well that the men of the pulpit are held to be wanting in
practical knowledge, and that we know but little of the dark and devious
ways of this naughty world. So that, rising here, I feel as if I were
but a little one among a thousand, and yet I would venture to submit
that the clergy are not wholly unpractical. Nay, I sometimes am led to
think that the men of my cloth are the most practical, common-sense
business men in the world. [Laughter and applause.]

There is certainly no class of men who can make so little go so far, who
can live so comfortably on such small incomes, who can fatten on
pastures where the members of this Chamber of Commerce would starve.
[Applause and laughter.] There is no class of men that go through life
in such large proportion without bankruptcy. [Laughter and applause.]

While 25,000 merchants in the United States during the four years from
1871 to 1875 failed in business, with liabilities amounting to
$800,000,000 (I qu