I was sorry to have my name mentioned as one of the great authors, because they have a sad habit of dying off.  Chaucer is dead, Spencer is dead, so is Milton, so is Shakespeare, and I am not feeling very well myself.

GALVESTON ORPHAN BAZAAR

          Addressat A fair held at the Waldorf-Astoria, new York, in
          October, 1900, in aid of the orphans at Galveston

I expected that the Governor of Texas would occupy this place first and would speak to you, and in the course of his remarks would drop a text for me to talk from; but with the proverbial obstinacy that is proverbial with governors, they go back on their duties, and he has not come here, and has not furnished me with a text, and I am here without a text.  I have no text except what you furnish me with your handsome faces, and —­but I won’t continue that, for I could go on forever about attractive faces, beautiful dresses, and other things.  But, after all, compliments should be in order in a place like this.

I have been in New York two or three days, and have been in a condition of strict diligence night and day, the object of this diligence being to regulate the moral and political situation on this planet—­put it on a sound basis—­and when you are regulating the conditions of a planet it requires a great deal of talk in a great many kinds of ways, and when you have talked a lot the emptier you get, and get also in a position of corking.  When I am situated like that, with nothing to say, I feel as though I were a sort of fraud; I seem to be playing a part, and please consider I am playing a part for want of something better, and this, is not unfamiliar to me; I have often done this before.

When I was here about eight years ago I was coming up in a car of the elevated road.  Very few people were in that car, and on one end of it there was no one, except on the opposite seat, where sat a man about fifty years old, with a most winning face and an elegant eye—­a beautiful eye; and I took him from his dress to be a master mechanic, a man who had a vocation.  He had with him a very fine little child of about four or five years.  I was watching the affection which existed between those two.  I judged he was the grandfather, perhaps.  It was really a pretty child, and I was admiring her, and as soon as he saw I was admiring her he began to notice me.

I could see his admiration of me in his eye, and I did what everybody else would do—­admired the child four times as much, knowing I would get four times as much of his admiration.  Things went on very pleasantly.  I was making my way into his heart.