that the laws of supply and demand assert themselves in the domain of dramatic literature as elsewhere.  What the people, out of the advancement of their knowledge, out of the enlightenment of modern education, want, they will ask for; what they demand, they will have.  And at the present moment the English people appear to be inclined to grant to the English dramatist the utmost freedom to deal with questions which have long been thought to be outside the province of the stage.  I do not deplore, I rejoice that this is so, and I rejoice that to the dramatists of my day—­to those at least who care to attempt to discharge it, falls the duty of striking from the limbs of English drama some of its shackles. ["Hear!  Hear!”] I know that the discharge of this duty is attended by one great, one special peril.  And in thinking particularly of the younger generation of dramatists, those upon whom the immediate future of our drama depends, I cannot help expressing the hope that they will accept this freedom as a privilege to be jealously exercised, a privilege to be exercised in the spirit which I have been so presumptuous as to indicate.

It would be easy by a heedless employment of the latitude allowed us to destroy its usefulness, indeed to bring about a reaction which would deprive us of our newly granted liberty altogether.  Upon this point the young, the coming dramatist would perhaps do well to ponder; he would do well, I think, to realize fully that freedom in art must be guarded by the eternal unwritten laws of good taste, morality, and beauty, he would do well to remember always that the real courage of the artist is in his capacity for restraint. [Cheers.] I am deeply sensible of the honor which has been done me in the association of my name with this toast, and I ask your leave to add one word—­a word of regret at the absence to-night of my friend, Mr. Toole, an absence unhappily occasioned by an illness from which he is but slowly recovering.  Mr. Toole charges me to express his deep disappointment at being prevented from attending this banquet.  He does not, however, instruct me to say what I do say heartily—­that Mr. Toole fitly represents in any assemblage, his own particular department of the drama; more fitly represents his department than I do mine.  I know of no actor who stands higher in the esteem, who exists more durably in the affection of those who know him, than does John Lawrence Toole.

[Illustration:  HORACE PORTER

Photogravure after a photograph from life]

HORACE PORTER

MEN OF MANY INVENTIONS