What I prize most is safety, and in, the second place swift transit and handiness.  These are best furnished, by the American line, whose watertight compartments have no passage through them; no doors to be left open, and consequently no way for water to get from one of them to another in time of collision.  If you nullify the peril which collisions threaten you with, you nullify the only very serious peril which attends voyages in the great liners of our day, and makes voyaging safer than staying at home.

When the Paris was half-torn to pieces some years ago, enough of the Atlantic ebbed and flowed through one end of her, during her long agony, to sink the fleets of the world if distributed among them; but she floated in perfect safety, and no life was lost.  In time of collision the rock of Gibraltar is not safer than the Paris and other great ships of this line.  This seems to be the only great line in the world that takes a passenger from metropolis to metropolis without the intervention of tugs and barges or bridges—­takes him through without breaking bulk, so to speak.

On the English side he lands at a dock; on the dock a special train is waiting; in an hour and three-quarters he is in, London.  Nothing could be handier.  If your journey were from a sand-pit on our side to a lighthouse on the other, you could make it quicker by other lines, but that is not the case.  The journey is from the city of New York to the city of London, and no line can do that journey quicker than this one, nor anywhere near as conveniently and handily.  And when the passenger lands on our side he lands on the American side of the river, not in the provinces.  As a very learned man said on the last voyage (he is head quartermaster of the New York land garboard streak of the middle watch)

“When we land a passenger on the American side there’s nothing betwix him and his hotel but hell and the hackman.”

I am glad, with you and the nation, to welcome the new ship.  She is another pride, another consolation, for a great country whose mighty fleets have all vanished, and which has almost forgotten, what it is to fly its flag to sea.  I am not sure as to which St. Paul she is named for.  Some think it is the one that is on the upper Mississippi, but the head quartermaster told me it was the one that killed Goliath.  But it is not important.  No matter which it is, let us give her hearty welcome and godspeed.

SIXTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY

          Atthe Metropolitan club, new York, November 28, 1902

          Address at a dinner given in honor of Mr. Clemens by Colonel
          Harvey, President of Harper & Brothers.