“I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality.  It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations.  Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of.  But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us.  Of one thing, at least, I am sure.  As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid—­and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come—­the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we in turn must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us.”

A hearty murmur of assent ran round the table.  It shot through Gabriel’s mind that Miss Ivors was not there and that she had gone away discourteously:  and he said with confidence in himself: 

“Ladies and Gentlemen,

“A new generation is growing up in our midst, a generation actuated by new ideas and new principles.  It is serious and enthusiastic for these new ideas and its enthusiasm, even when it is misdirected, is, I believe, in the main sincere.  But we are living in a sceptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age:  and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.  Listening tonight to the names of all those great singers of the past it seemed to me, I must confess, that we were living in a less spacious age.  Those days might, without exaggeration, be called spacious days:  and if they are gone beyond recall let us hope, at least, that in gatherings such as this we shall still speak of them with pride and affection, still cherish in our hearts the memory of those dead and gone great ones whose fame the world will not willingly let die.”

“Hear, hear!” said Mr. Browne loudly.

“But yet,” continued Gabriel, his voice falling into a softer inflection, “there are always in gatherings such as this sadder thoughts that will recur to our minds:  thoughts of the past, of youth, of changes, of absent faces that we miss here tonight.  Our path through life is strewn with many such sad memories:  and were we to brood upon them always we could not find the heart to go on bravely with our work among the living.  We have all of us living duties and living affections which claim, and rightly claim, our strenuous endeavours.

“Therefore, I will not linger on the past.  I will not let any gloomy moralising intrude upon us here tonight.  Here we are gathered together for a brief moment from the bustle and rush of our everyday routine.  We are met here as friends, in the spirit of good-fellowship, as colleagues, also to a certain extent, in the true spirit of camaraderie, and as the guests of—­what shall I call them? —­the Three Graces of the Dublin musical world.”