to the humblest laborer in our land comforts that were not dreamed of years ago. An able and high minded chief magistrate is administering the affairs of government which were suddenly thrust upon him. By successive steps in the public service our fellow citizen won the esteem and confidence of the people, and when the call was made upon him in the moment of national bereavement he was prepared to assume the duties of his high office. To-day standing pleged to the policy of William McKinley, the civilized world centers its gaze upon the youngest of American presidents, Theodore Roosevelt (Applause), confident that he will meet the highest expectations.

Gentlemen, I will close by asking you to join me in a silent toast to the memory of our martyred Presidents, Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. This toast was drunk standing and in silence.

Before introducing the speakers of the evening the Chairman of the Dinner Committee, Judge Deuel, will read letters from prominent men who are unable to be with us to-night.

(Judge Deuel then read letters from Hon. Robert T. Lincoln and Hon. M. A. Hanna, also from Gov. William H. Taft, of the Philippines.)

ADDRESS OF

Hon. JAMES WILLIS GLEED.

The President: Ladies and Gentlemen, the first speaker of the evening, hails from Kansas. In the old days, when the fight for free soil was on it was called bleeding Kansas, but in these days of Republican good times it may fittingly be named Booming Kansas. The orator to whom we are to listen was born as far east as Vermont, but early in his career he gave heed to Horace Greeley's admonition, and went West. His fame as an orator has preceeded him, and I am sure that with Abraham Lincoln as his theme he will be inspired to do his best. I have the pleasure of presenting to you the Hon. James Willis Gleed, of Kansas, who will speak to us of Abraham Lincoln. Applause.)

TOAST-ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

(Great

Forty years have passed since the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln. His great secretaries and military commanders, his liuetenants in Congress, his staunch allies, the war governors of the States, the great intellectual, financial and political leaders of that far-off time, his friends and his enemies both North and South, who could properly be called his contemporaries, are all, or nearly all, at rest. Even the youngest of the boys who fought for and against him begin to be warned by the dimmed eye, the heavy ear, or the faltering step, that the time draweth nigh.

The president of to-day was in his cradle forty years ago. A new generation has come, to whom the stress and storm and passion of the great Rebellion are but as a story that is told; and even to the oldest of my hearers the fife, the drum, the tread of marching feet, the clash of arms and the roar of cannon are an echo and a memory growing ever dimmer and more distant.

During these forty years a thousand books have been written and published about Abraham Lincoln, and ten thousand essays and addresses. His career has been described and his

character has been analyzed; he has been placed and sung and glorified till history and philosophy and eloquence and poetry are exhausted and no new thing remains to be said.

But while, as each new anniversary arrives, we can only say the old things, it is fitting and proper that the old things should be said; and it is certain that they will be said every year more simply and reverently and sincerely. We cannot praise him; we cannot glorify him. We cannot even describe him-no words are simple and majestic enough but his own. I can think of no commemoration on an occasion like this quite fitting and adequate, except the Gettysburg address, the second inaugural, and a few moments of silent thankfulness to Almighty God for Abraham Lincoln. (Applause).

And yet we must remember that such deep feelings of reverence and gratitude are not native to the human heart-they do not come spontaneously to each new generation-but are born of study and reflection and, therefore, it is necessary that new books should be written and new addresses be made and that the old things should be said and said again.

In the few minutes allotted to me to-night I suppose it is not very important or material what special features of his career or his character or his teachings I endeavor to recall.

It

Mr. Lincoln in a marvelous way embodies the history and character of the American people. The tragedy of his life, like the tragedy of the nation's life, takes root a long way back. It was in Virginia that the first African slaves were landed. It was a Virginian, Colonel Mason, who said, in the Federal Convention: "Slavery brings the judgment of Heaven upon a country. As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities." was another Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, who later said of slavery: "Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice cannot sleep forever." When the national punishment came, it was Virginia that suffered most. In Virginia the great tragedy came to an end; and it was in Virginia that the father and the mother of Abraham Lincoln were born. Thus the tree of healing springs from the Old Domain where the national disease was first planted.

It is, perhaps, due to slavery that this father and mother can neither read nor write; that he is shiftless, inefficient and nomadic. It is, perhaps, due to slavery that we see the future president born. as in a manger, amid surroundings most barren, hopeless and depressing. No angel of the Lord warns the shepherds of his advent. No star comes and stands over where the young child

lies. No Wise Men of the East visit his cradle. And had vision warned and star directed and were the wise men here, they could not worship; they could not believe that this rude log cabin, without window or door, on this barren farm in Hardin County, Kentucky, holds the saviour of a nation. (Applause.) To the Wise Men of the East no place more unlikely to cradle a great statesman than the rude hovel of this vagrant "poor white"; just as to the Wise Men of the West no place more unlikely to cradle a great, rugged, humane man of the people than a mansion of a merchant prince here in New York. (Applause.) Fortunately under our form of government neither Hardin County, Kentucky, nor New York City is barred. Fortunately under our form of government the merchant prince as well as the wandering pioneer may be father to a president. Fortunately under our Constitution we can avail ourselves of wisdom and of worth wheresoever they spring. (Applause.)

Regarding Mr. Lincoln, the important thing is, of course, to comprehend what he became, what he did and what he taught; and yet we love to dwell on the becoming--the early processesand to go over the dramatic outward incidents of his life.

We follow him from Kentucky into Indiana. We see him at school there, in the open woods all day and by the firelight after the day's work is done. We take interest in his college days; we see him at his athletics in that wide, leafy, whispering gymnasium of his-axe in hand-building him a body of iron; and we see him in his library with the Bible and Pilgrim's Progress and Shakespeare and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; and somehow we know that these professors of his, Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and Bunyan, and Shakespeare, and Washington, and Jefferson, ana the great World of Nature, and the Human Struggle and Suffering, are never in the future to be in anywise ashamed of their handiwork. (Applause.)

In 1830 we see him moving his family, with their scant and meager chattels westward to Illinois; we see him on his southern journey floating slowly down to his first shuddering contact with human slavery:-that thing which he said "had, and continually exercised, the power of making him miserable." We see him hunting his place in the world of work; he is a farm laborer, a flat-boatman, a clerk, a small merchant. He meditates becoming a blacksmith. He is a captain in the Black Hawk War. He becomes a surveyor and a postmaster, and finally devotes himself to the study and practice of the law.