sy of manner--how tenderly will they
be remembered! How dearly are they prized! Scholar!--Actor!--Gentleman!
long may he be spared to dignify and adorn the stage--a soother of our
cares, and comfort to our hearts--exemplar for our lives!--the Edelweiss
of his age and of our affections! [Great applause.]

* * * * *

TRIBUTE TO LESTER WALLACK

[Speech of William Winter at a banquet of the Lotos Club, given to
Lester Wallack, December 17, 1887. Whitelaw Reid, the President of
the Club, occupied the chair. Mr. Winter was called upon to speak
in behalf of the critics.]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:--You have done me great honor in
asking me to be present on this occasion, and you have conferred upon me
a great privilege in permitting me to participate with you in this
tribute of affection and admiration for John Lester Wallack, your
distinguished and most deservedly honored guest and my personal friend
these many, many years. [Cheers.]

I thank you for your thoughtful courtesy and for this distinguished mark
of your favor. Being well aware of my defects both as a thinker and a
speaker, I shrink from such emergencies as this, but having known him so
long and having been in a professional way associated with so many of
his labors and his triumphs, I should fail in duty if I were not at
least to try to add my word of love, feeble and inadequate as it may be,
to the noble volume of your sympathy and homage. [Cheers.]

The presence of this brilliant assemblage, the eloquent words which have
fallen from the lips of your honored president and the speeches of your
orators, they signify some change--I will not say in regard to the
advancement of the stage--but they signify a wonderful advancement in
our times in sympathetic and thoughtful and just appreciation of the
theatre. This was not always so. It is not very long since so wise and
gentle a man as Charles Lamb expressed his mild astonishment that a
person capable of committing to memory and reciting the language of
Shakespeare could for that reason be supposed to possess a mind
congenial with that of the poet. The scorn of Carlyle and the scarcely
less injurious pity of Emerson for the actor are indications that in a
time not remote, thought and philosophy have made but little account of
the stage.

Something might be said about this by a voice more competent than mine,
for in our time there has been a change in th