Out of compliment they placed me last in the list—­No. 15—­I was to “hold the crowd”—­and bless my life I was in awful terror when No. 14. rose, at a o’clock this morning and killed all the enthusiasm by delivering the flattest, insipidest, silliest of all responses to “Woman” that ever a weary multitude listened to.  Then Gen. Sherman (Chairman) announced my toast, and the crowd gave me a good round of applause as I mounted on top of the dinner table, but it was only on account of my name, nothing more —­they were all tired and wretched.  They let my first sentence go in. silence, till I paused and added “we stand on common ground”—­then they burst forth like a hurricane and I saw that I had them!  From that time on, I stopped at the end of each sentence, and let the tornado of applause and laughter sweep around me—­and when I closed with “And if the child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded,” I say it who oughtn’t to say it, the house came down with a crash.  For two hours and a half, now, I’ve been shaking hands and listening to congratulations.  Gen. Sherman said, “Lord bless you, my boy, I don’t know how you do it—­it’s a secret that’s beyond me—­but it was great—­give me your hand again.”

And do you know, Gen. Grant sat through fourteen speeches like a graven image, but I fetched him!  I broke him up, utterly!  He told me he laughed till the tears came and every bone in his body ached. (And do you know, the biggest part of the success of the speech lay in the fact that the audience saw that for once in his life he had been knocked out of his iron serenity.)

Bless your soul, ’twas immense.  I never was so proud in my life.  Lots and lots of people—­hundreds I might say—­told me my speech was the triumph of the evening—­which was a lie.  Ladies, Tom, Dick and Harry —­even the policemen—­captured me in the halls and shook hands, and scores of army officers said “We shall always be grateful to you for coming.”  General Pope came to bunt me up—­I was afraid to speak to him on that theatre stage last night, thinking it might be presumptuous to tackle a man so high up in military history.  Gen. Schofield, and other historic men, paid their compliments.  Sheridan was ill and could not come, but I’m to go with a General of his staff and see him before I go to Col.  Grant’s.  Gen. Augur—­well, I’ve talked with them all, received invitations from them all—­from people living everywhere—­and as I said before, it’s a memorable night.  I wouldn’t have missed it for anything in the world.

But my sakes, you should have heard Ingersoll’s speech on that table!  Half an hour ago he ran across me in the crowded halls and put his arms about me and said “Mark, if I live a hundred years, I’ll always be grateful for your speech—­Lord what a supreme thing it was.”  But I told him it wasn’t any use to talk, he had walked off with the honors of that occasion by something of a majority.  Bully boy is Ingersoll—­traveled with him in the cars the other day, and you can make up your mind we had a good time.