I do not know, sir, who may be my successor, but I venture to assure you that he will be an American gentleman, fit by character and capacity to be the medium of communication between our countries; and an American gentleman, when you come to know him, generally turns out to be a not very distant kinsman of an English gentleman. [Cheers.] I need not bespeak for him a kindly reception.  I know he will receive it for his country’s sake and his own. ["Hear!  Hear!”]

“Farewell,” sir, is a word often lightly uttered and readily forgotten.  But when it marks the rounding-off and completion of a chapter in life, the severance of ties many and cherished, of the parting with many friends at once—­especially when it is spoken among the lengthening shadows of the western light—­it sticks somewhat in the throat.  It becomes, indeed, “the word that makes us linger.”  But it does not prompt many other words.  It is best expressed in few.  What goes without saying is better than what is said.  Not much can be added to the old English word “Good-by.”  You are not sending me away empty-handed or alone.  I go freighted and laden with happy memories—­inexhaustible and unalloyed—­of England, its warm-hearted people, and their measureless kindness.  Spirits more than twain will cross with me, messengers of your good-will.  Happy the nation that can thus speed its parting guest!  Fortunate the guest who has found his welcome almost an adoption, and whose farewell leaves half his heart behind! [Loud cheers.]

ARTHUR WING PINERO

THE DRAMA

[Speech of Arthur Wing Pinero at the annual banquet of the Royal Academy, London, May 4, 1895.  The toast to the “Drama” was coupled with that to “Music,” to which Sir Alexander Mackenzie responded.  Sir John Millais in proposing the toast said:  “I have already spoken for both music and the drama with my brush. ["Hear!  Hear!”] I have painted Sterndale Bennett, Arthur Sullivan, Irving, and Hare.”]

Your royal highness, my lords, and gentlemen:—­There ought to be at least one strong link of sympathy between certain painters and certain dramatists, for in the craft of painting as in that of play-writing, popular success is not always held to be quite creditable.  Not very long ago I met at an exhibition of pictures a friend whose business it is to comment in the public journals upon painting and the drama.  The exhibition was composed of the works of two artists, and I found myself in one room praising the pictures of the man who was exhibiting in the other.  My friend promptly took me to task.  “Surely,” said he, “you noticed that two-thirds of the works in the next room are already sold?” I admitted having observed that many of the pictures were so ticketed.  My friend shrugged his shoulders.  “But,” said I, anxiously, “do you really regard that circumstance as reflecting disparagingly