We
know all about that party on the platform who, with the best
intentions, can do nothing for our luggage except pitch it into all
sorts of unattainable places. We know all about that short
omnibus, in which one is to be doubled up, to the imminent danger
of the crown of one's hat; and about that fly, whose leading
peculiarity is never to be there when it is wanted. We know, too,
how instantaneously the lights of the station disappear when the
train starts, and about that grope to the new Railway Hotel, which
will be an excellent house when the customers come, but which at
present has nothing to offer but a liberal allowance of damp mortar
and new lime.
I record these little incidents of home travel mainly with the
object of increasing your interest in the purpose of this night's
assemblage. Every traveller has a home of his own, and he learns
to appreciate it the more from his wandering. If he has no home,
he learns the same lesson unselfishly by turning to the homes of
other men. He may have his experiences of cheerful and exciting
pleasures abroad; but home is the best, after all, and its
pleasures are the most heartily and enduringly prized. Therefore,
ladies and gentlemen, every one must be prepared to learn that
commercial travellers, as a body, know how to prize those domestic
relations from which their pursuits so frequently sever them; for
no one could possibly invent a more delightful or more convincing
testimony to the fact than they themselves have offered in founding
and maintaining a school for the children of deceased or
unfortunate members of their own body; those children who now
appeal to you in mute but eloquent terms from the gallery.
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