Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAMBER OF COMMERCE BANQUET ADDRESS AT THE I2IST BANQUET OF THE NEW YORK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE, NOVEMBER IQ, 1889. Mr. Chairman And Gentlemen: I am not down on the list. I have been alluded to in various forms by the speakers here to-night. By the gentleman who represents the Interior Department I am spoken of as a man who has fancy, but is without facts. The distinguished judge who sits beside me says, I am no orator as Brutus is. It is the first time that I ever heard of Mark Antony in a judicial station. It is hardly fair, when we have an ex-President of the United States, a justice of our highest court, an ex-Min- ister to England, whose eloquence has thrilled the British until the flavor of his speech is all they recollect of America, and when ve have a member of the Cabinet here, and all these distinguished officers have recited their pieces, I say it is hardly fair to call upon an ordinary railroad man to address discursive remarks and observations on the great questions which belong to the law. But certain suggestions have come to me in the course of the eloquent and able speeches which have been uttered. I thought when President Cleveland was urging upon the assemblage the necessity for it to take part in public affairs, to sacrifice its business to serve the government, he little knew how many of you since the fourth day of March last have expressed to me an anxious desire to serve your government. There is scarcely a man in this assemblage whose petition I have not signed for a Cabinet office, a foreign mission, or a consulship. You, gentlemen, are all patriots. When ex-President Cleveland made that remark he little knew what sacrifices business men would make, on occasion, upon the altar of their country. As a lawyer I was pleased to see the way in which…