ht we could shoot people rapidly
enough to satisfy our consciences, with single-loading rifles; but along
came the inventive Yankee and produced revolvers and repeaters, and
Gatling guns, and magazine guns--guns that carried a dozen shots at a
time. I didn't wonder at the curiosity exhibited in this direction by a
backwoods Virginian we captured one night. The first remark he made was,
"I would like to see one of them thar new-fangled weepons of yourn. They
tell me, sah, it's a most remarkable eenstrument. They say, sah, it's a
kind o' repeatable, which you can load it up enough on Sunday to fiah it
off all the rest of the week." [Laughter.] Then there was every sort of
new invention in the way of bayonets. Our distinguished Secretary of
State has expressed an opinion to-night that bayonets are bad things to
sit down on. Well, they are equally bad things to be tossed up on. If he
continues to hold up such terrors to the army, there will have to be
important modifications in the uniform. A soldier won't know where to
wear his breastplate. [Laughter.] But there have not only been
inventions in the way of guns, but important inventions in the way of
firing them. In these days a man drops on his back, coils himself up,
sticks up one foot, and fires off his gun over the top of his great toe.
It changes the whole stage business of battle. It used to be the man who
was shot, but now it is the man who shoots that falls on his back and
turns up his toes. [Laughter and applause.] The consequence is, that the
whole world wants American arms, and as soon as they get them they go
to war to test them. Russia and Turkey had no sooner bought a supply
than they went to fighting. Greece got a schooner-load, and, although
she has not yet taken a part in the struggle, yet ever since the digging
up of the lost limbs of the Venus of Milo, it has been feared that this
may indicate a disposition on the part of Greece generally to take up
arms. [Laughter and applause.]

But there was one inveterate old inventor that you had to get rid of,
and you put him on to us Pennsylvanians--Benjamin Franklin. [Laughter.]
Instead of stopping in New York, in Wall Street, as such men usually do,
he continued on into Pennsylvania to pursue his kiting operations. He
never could let well enough alone. Instead of allowing the lightning to
occupy the heavens as the sole theatre for its pyrotechnic displays, he
showed it how to get down on to the earth, and then he