To the
wholesome training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very
young man, I constantly refer my first successes; and my sons will
hereafter testify of their father that he was always steadily proud
of that ladder by which he rose. If it were otherwise, I should
have but a very poor opinion of their father, which, perhaps, upon
the whole, I have not. Hence, gentlemen, under any circumstances,
this company would have been exceptionally interesting and
gratifying to me. But whereas I supposed that, like the fairies'
pavilion in the "Arabian Nights," it would be but a mere handful,
and I find it turn out, like the same elastic pavilion, capable of
comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the
honour of being your guest; for you will readily believe that the
more widely representative of the press in America my entertainers
are, the more I must feel the good-will and the kindly sentiments
towards me of that vast institution.
Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land,
and I have for upwards of four hard winter months so contended
against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was "a
true American catarrh "--a possession which I have throughout
highly appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalised
by any other outward and visible signs--I say, gentlemen, so much
of my voice has lately been heard, that I might have been contented
with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were
it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not only here
but on every suitable occasion whatsoever and wheresoever, to
express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in
America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity
and magnanimity.
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