Here is the speech. If I don’t deliver it, I will so inform you by telegraph. But if you don’t get a telegram from me before noon to-morrow, you can insert a portion or all of the speech in the Boston Herald, or elsewhere,—or in the waste-basket.

I leave for Boston at 8.30 to-morrowⒶemendation morning.

enclosure:

That a banquet should be given in my honor, in this ostensibly foreign land, & in this great city, ; t and that my ears should be greeted by such complimentary words from such distinguished lips, are most pleasant eminent surprises to me, and I will not conceal the fact that they are also deeply gratifying. I thank you, one & all, gentlemen, for these marks of favor & friendliness; & even if I have not really or sufficiently deserved them, I assure you that I do none not any the less keenly enjoy & esteem them on that account.

When a stranger appears abruptly in a country, without any apparent business there, & at an unusual season of the year, the judicious thing for him to do is to explain. This seems peculiarly necessary in my case, on account of a series of unfortunate happenings, here, which followed my arrival, & which the public may have felt compelled to connect with that circumstance. I would most gladly explain, if I could; but I have nothing for my defence but my bare word; so I simply declare, in all sincerity, & with my hand on my heart, that I never heard of that diamond-robbery till I saw it in the morning paper; & I can say with perfect truth that I never saw that box of dynamite till the police came around here to inquire if I had any more of it. Theyse are mere assertions, I grant you; but they come from the lips of one who was never known to utter an untruth, except for practice, & who certainly would not so stultify the traditions of an upright life as to utter one now, in a strange land, & in such a presence as this, when there is nothing to be gained by it & he does not need any practice. I brought with me to this city a friend—a Boston publisher; but alas, even this does not sufficiently explain these sinister mysteries; if I had brought a Toronto publisher along, it would have been different. But no—possibly not; for the burglar took the diamond studs, but left the shirt. Would a Toronto publisher have left the shirt?

To continue my explanation. I did not come to Canada to commit crime—this time—but to prevent it. I came here to place myself under the protection of the Canadian law & secure a copyright. I have complied with the requirements of the law; I have followed the instructions of some of the best legal minds in the city, including my own, & so my errand is accomplished; at least so far as any exertions of mine can aid that accomplishment. It is true this is a rather complex & cumbersome way to fence & fortify one’s property against the literary buccaneer; still, if it is effective, it is a great advance upon past conditions, & one to be correspondingly welcomed. It makes one hope & believe that a day is coming, when, in the eye of the law, literary property will be as sacred as whisky, or any other of the necessities of life. In this age of ours, if you steal another man’s label to advertise your own brand of whisky with, you will be heavily fined & otherwise punished for violating that trade-mark; if you steal the whisky, without the trade-markⒶemendation, you go to jail; but if you could prove that the whisky was literature, you could steal them both, & the law wouldn’t say a word. It grieves me, it pains me, to think how far more profound & reverent a respect the law would have for literature if a body could only get drunk on it. Still, the world moves; the interests of literature upon our continent are improving; let us be content, & wait. In monsieur Frèchette, we have with us here a fellow-craftsman, born on our own side of the Atlantic, who has created an epoch in this continents literary history—an author who has earned, & worthily earned & received, the vast distinction of being crowned by the Academy of France. This is honor & achievement enough, for the cause & the craft, for one decade assuredly.

If one may have the privilege of throwing in a personal impression or two, without prejudice, I would remark that my stay in Montreal & Quebec has been exceedingly pleasant, but the weather has been a good deal of a disappointment. Canada has a reputation for magnificent winter weather, & has a prophet who is bound by every sentiment of honor & loyalty to furnish it; but the result, this time, has been a mess of insipid & characterless weather which all right-feeling Canadians are probably ashamed of. Still, only the country is to blame; nobody has a right to blame the prophet, for this wasn’t the kind of weather he promised. But never mind; what you lack in weather you make up in the means of grace. This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn’t throw a brick without breaking a church window. Yet I was told that you are going to build one more. I said, it is a good scheme, but where are you going to find room? They said, we will build it on top of another church, & use an elevator. This shows that the gift of lying is not yet dead in the land. I suppose one must come in the summer to get the full advantage of the Canadian scenery. A cabman drove me two miles, up a perpendicular hill, in a sleigh, & showed me a noble snow-storm from the Heights of Quebec; but nothing else was visible. The man was an ass; I could have seen the snow-storm as well from the hotel window, & saved my money. Still I may have been the ass myself; anyway, there was an ass in the party; and I do suppose that wherever a mercenary cabman & a gifted literary character are gathered together for business, there is always bound to be an ass in that combination somewhere. It has always been so in my case; & I have generally been elected, too. But it is no matter; I would rather be an ass than a cabman, any time, except in the summer; & then, with my gifts, I could be both.

I saw the Plains of Abraham, & the spot where the lamented Wolfe stood when he made the memorable remark that he would rather be the author of Gray’s Elegy than take Quebec. But why did he say so rash a thing? It was because he supposed there was going to be international copyright. Otherwise there would be no money in it. I was also shown the spot where Sir William Phips stood when he said he would rather take a walk than take two Quebecs. And he took the walk; I saw the spot. I have looked with deep emotion, here in your city, upon the monument which makes forever memorable the spot where Horatio Nelson did not stand when he fell. I have seen the cab which Champlain employed when he arrived overland at Quebec; I have seen the horse which Jacques Cartier rode when he discovered Montreal. I have used them both; I will never do it again. Yes, I have seen all the historical places; the localities have been pointed out to me where the scenery is warehoused for the season; my sojourn has been to my moral & intellectual profit; I have behaved with propriety & discretion, I have meddled nowhere but in the election. But I am used to voting; for I live in a town where, if you may judge by the local prints, there are only two conspicuous industries: committing burglaries & holding elections,—& I like to keep my hand in. I picked So I voted a good deal here.

SLC deleted the following passage by cutting out both sides of the page, leaving a narrow strip in the center; portions of words and sentences remain visible, canceled with vertical lines, and they are transcribed here line by line, as they appear on the MS page:

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of times again

Where so many of the guests are French, the propriety will be recognized of my making a portion of my speech in the beautiful language, in order that I may be partly understood. I speak French with timidity, & not flowingly—except when excited; & when speaking using that language, I have often noticed that I have seldom been mistaken for a Frenchman; except, perhaps, by horses. I had hoped that mere French construction, with English words, would answer, but this is not the case. I tried it at a gentleman’s door in Quebec, & it did not work. The servant maid-servant asked, “What would monsieur? I said, “Monsieur So-&-so, is he with himself?” She did not understand. I said, “Is it that Monsieur is still not returned of his house of merchandize?” She did not understand. I said, “He will desolate himself when he learns that his friend Americain was arrived & he not with himself to shake him at the hand.” She didn’t understand that, either—& lost her temper. SomebodyⒶemendation back there somewhere called out impatiently, “Qui est donc ◊ Ⓐemendation là? ” or words to that effect. The girl said, “C’est un fou,” & shut the door on me. Maybe she was correct. But, as I before suggested, I will now close this oration with a few sentiments in the French language. over Ⓐemendation

inserted on the verso:

I have not ornamented them, I have not burdened them with flowers of rhetoric; because, to my mind, that literature is best & most enduring which is characterized by a noble simplicity.

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overⒶemendation again

J’ai le belle bouton d’or de mon oncle, mais je n’ai pas celui du charpentier. SiⒶemendation vous avez le fromage du pauvre menuisier, c’est bon; mais si vous ne l’avez pas, ne se desolé pas, prenez le grand chapeau de drap noir de son beau-frère malade. Tout à l’heure! Savoir faire! Qu’est ce que vous dit! Paté de fois gras! Revenons à nos moutons! Pardonnez-moi, messieurs, essayant à parler la belle langue d’Ollendorff strains me more than you can possibly imagine. But I meant well, & I’ve done the best I could.