Now, gentlemen, let me say that the presence of General Grant to-night will enable you to settle forever that question which has vexed the New England mind all the period during which he was making his triumphal journey round the globe—­the question as to whether, in his intercourse with kings and potentates, he was always sure to keep in sufficient prominence the merits of the Pilgrim fathers, and more especially of their descendants.  I have no doubt he did.  I have no doubt that to those crowned heads, with numerous recalcitrant subjects constantly raising Cain in their dominions, the recital of how the Pilgrims went voluntarily to a distant country to live, where their scalps were in danger, must have been a pleasant picture. [Laughter.]

If I am to have any reputation for brevity I must now close these remarks.  I remember a lesson in brevity I once received in a barber’s shop.  An Irishman came in, and the unsteady gait with which he approached the chair showed that he had been imbibing of the produce of the still run by North Carolina Moonshiners.  He wanted his hair cut, and while the barber was getting him ready, went off into a drunken sleep.  His head got bobbing from one side to the other, and at length the barber, in making a snip, cut off the lower part of his ear.  The barber jumped about and howled, and a crowd of neighbors rushed in.  Finally the demonstration became so great that it began to attract the attention of the man in the chair, and he opened one eye and said, “Wh-wh-at’s the matther wid yez?” “Good Lord!” said the barber, “I’ve cut off the whole lower part of your ear.”  “Have yez?  Ah, thin, go on wid yer bizness—­it was too long, anyhow!” [Laughter.] If I don’t close this speech, some one of the company will be inclined to remark that it has been too long, anyhow. [Cheers and laughter.]

* * * * *

A TRIP ABROAD WITH DEPEW

[Speech of Horace Porter at the seventy-seventh annual dinner of the New England Society in the City of New York, December 22, 1882.  Josiah M. Fiske, the President, occupied the chair and called upon General Porter to respond to the toast:  “The Embarkation of the Pilgrims.”]

GENTLEMEN:—­Last summer two pilgrims might have been seen embarking from the port of New York to visit the land from which the Pilgrim Fathers once embarked.  One was the speaker who just sat down [Chauncey M. Depew], and the other the speaker who has just arisen.  I do not know why we chose that particular time.  Perhaps Mr. Choate, with his usual disregard of the more accurate bounds of veracity, would have you believe that we selected that time because it was a season when there was likely to be a general vacation from dinners here. [Laughter.] Our hopes of pleasure abroad had not risen to any dizzy height.  We did not expect that the land which so discriminating a band as the Pilgrim Fathers had deliberately abandoned, and preferred New England thereto, could be a very engaging country.  We expected to feel at home there upon the general principle that the Yankees never appear so much at home as when they are visiting other people. [Laughter.]