“I had a two-thirds interest in the publishing firm whose capital I furnished.  If the firm had prospered I would have expected to collect two-thirds of the profits.  As it is, I expect to pay all the debts.  My partner has no resources, and I do not look for assistance to my wife, whose contributions in cash from her own means have nearly equalled the claims of all the creditors combined.  She has taken nothing; on the contrary, she has helped and intends to help me to satisfy the obligations due to the rest of the creditors.

“It is my intention to ask my creditors to accept that as a legal discharge, and trust to my honor to pay the other fifty per cent. as fast as I can earn it.  From my reception thus far on my lecturing tour, I am confident that if I live I can pay off the last debt within four years.

“After which, at the age of sixty-four, I can make a fresh and unincumbered start in life.  I am going to Australia, India, and South Africa, and next year I hope to make a tour of the great cities of the United States.”

I thank you all out of my heart for this fraternal welcome, and it seems almost too fine, almost too magnificent, for a humble Missourian such as I am, far from his native haunts on the banks of the Mississippi; yet my modesty is in a degree fortified by observing that I am not the only Missourian who has been honored here to-night, for I see at this very table-here is a Missourian [indicating Mr. McKelway], and there is a Missourian [indicating Mr. Depew], and there is another Missourian—­and Hendrix and Clemens; and last but not least, the greatest Missourian of them all—­here he sits—­Tom Reed, who has always concealed his birth till now.  And since I have been away I know what has been happening in his case:  he has deserted politics, and now is leading a creditable life.  He has reformed, and God prosper him; and I judge, by a remark which he made up-stairs awhile ago, that he had found a new business that is utterly suited to his make and constitution, and all he is doing now is that he is around raising the average of personal beauty.

But I am grateful to the president for the kind words which he has said of me, and it is not for me to say whether these praises were deserved or not.  I prefer to accept them just as they stand, without concerning myself with the statistics upon which they have been built, but only with that large matter, that essential matter, the good-fellowship, the kindliness, the magnanimity, and generosity that prompted their utterance.  Well, many things have happened since I sat here before, and now that I think of it, the president’s reference to the debts which were left by the bankrupt firm of Charles L. Webster & Co. gives me an opportunity to say a word which I very much wish to say, not for myself, but for ninety-five men and women whom I shall always hold in high esteem and in pleasant remembrance—­the creditors of that firm.  They treated me well; they treated