ill take it in good part, if I say we knew that, by putting
one name at the end of the programme, we should be sure to hold the
audience here till the doxology. Now a speaker who bears the name
of the first ruler of Virginia I ever knew anything about, will
address you upon Virginia's still earlier ruler, Captain John
Smith."]

MR. CHAIRMAN:--It is one of the peculiarities of Americans,
that they attempt to solve the unsolvable problem of successfully mixing
gastronomy and oratory. In chemistry there are things known as
incompatibles, which it is impossible to blend and at the same time
preserve their original characteristics. It is impossible to have as
good a dinner as we have had served to-night, and preserve the
intellectual faculties of your guests so that they may be seen at their
best. I am not unmindful that in the menu the courses grew shorter until
they culminated in the pungent and brief episode of cheese, and so I
take it that as to the oratory here on tap, you desire it to become
gradually more brief and more pungent.

Now, the task of condensing into a five-minute speech two hundred and
seventy years of the history of America, is something that has been
assigned to me, and I propose to address myself to it without further
delay. [Laughter]

John Smith was at one time President of Virginia, and afterward Admiral
of New England, and ever since then, until lately, New England and
Virginia have been trying to pull loose from each other, so as not to be
under the same ruler. [Laughter and applause.] John Smith was a godsend
to the American settlers, because he was a plain man in a company of
titled nonentities, and after they had tried and failed in every effort
to make or perpetuate an American colony, plain John Smith, a democrat,
without a title, took the helm and made it a success. [Laughter.]

Then and there, and ever since, we laid aside the
Reginald-Trebizond-Percys of nobility, and stuck to the plain John
Smiths, honest citizens, of capacity and character. By his example we
learned that "Kind hearts are more than coronets," and simple men of
worth are infinitely better than titled vagabonds of Norman blood.
[Applause.] It is almost three centuries since a tiny vessel, not larger
than a modern fishing-smack, turned her head to the sunset across an
unknown sea, for the land of conjecture. The ship's company, composed of
passengers from England, that wonderful nest of human w