I have known Mr. Howells nearly thirty-four years, and I knew Chauncey Depew before he could walk straight, and before he learned to tell the truth. Twenty-seven years ago, I heard him make the most noble and eloquent and beautiful speech that has ever fallen from even his capable lips. Tom Reed said that my principal defect was inaccuracy of statement. Well, suppose that that is true. What's the use of telling the truth all the time? I never tell the truth about Tom Reed--but that is his defect, truth; he speaks the truth always. Tom Reed has a good heart, and he has a good intellect, but he hasn't any judgment. Why, when Tom Reed was invited to lecture to the Ladies' Society for the Procreation or Procrastination, or something, of morals, I don't know what it was-- advancement, I suppose, of pure morals--he had the immortal indiscretion to begin by saying that some of us can't be optimists, but by judiciously utilizing the opportunities that Providence puts in our way we can all be bigamists. You perceive his limitations. Anything he has in his mind he states, if he thinks it is true. Well, that was true, but that was no place to say it--so they fired him out.
A lot of accounts have been settled here tonight for me; I have held grudges against some of these people, but they have all been wiped out by the very handsome compliments that have been paid me. Even Wayne MacVeagh--I have had a grudge against him many years. The first time I saw Wayne MacVeagh was at a private dinner-party at Charles A. Dana's, and when I got there he was clattering along, and I tried to get a word in here and there; but you know what Wayne MacVeagh is when he is started, and I could not get in five words to his one--or one word to his five. I struggled along and struggled along, and--well, I wanted to tell and I was trying to tell a dream I had had the night before, and it was a remarkable dream, a dream worth people's while to listen to, a dream recounting Sam Jones the revivalist's reception in heaven. I was on a train, and was approaching the celestial way-station--I had a through ticket--and I noticed a man sitting alongside of me asleep, and he had his ticket in his hat. He was the remains of the Archbishop of Canterbury; I recognized him by his photograph. I had nothing against him, so I took his ticket and let him have mine. He didn't object--he wasn't in a condition to object--and presently when the train stopped at the heavenly station--well, I got off, and he went on by request--but there they all were, the angels, you know, millions of them, every one with a torch; they had arranged for a torch-light procession; they were expecting the Archbishop, and when I got off they started to raise a shout, but it didn't materialize. I don't know whether they were disappointed. I suppose they had a lot of superstitious ideas about the Archbishop and what he should look like, and I didn't fill the bill, and I was trying to explain to Saint Peter, and was doing it in the German tongue, because I didn't want to be too explicit. Well, I found it was no use, I couldn't get along, for Wayne MacVeagh was occupying the whole place, and I said to Mr. Dana, "What is the matter with that man? Who is that man with the long tongue? What's the trouble with him, that long, lank cadaver, old oil-derrick out of a job--who is that?" "Well, now," Mr. Dana said, "you don't want to meddle with him; you had better keep quiet; just keep quiet, because that's a bad man. Talk! He was born to talk. Don't let him get out with you; he'll skin you." I said, "I have been skinned, skinned, and skinned for years, there is nothing left." He said, "Oh, you'll find there is; that man is the very seed and inspiration of that proverb which says, 'No matter how close you skin an onion, a clever man can always peel it again.'" Well, I reflected and I quieted down. That would never occur to Tom Reed. He's got no discretion. Well, MacVeagh is just the same man; he hasn't changed a bit in all those years; he has been peeling Mr.