AN AMERICAN RESPONDING TO THE TOAST OF 'THE LADIES.'

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 2, Issue 189, 19 June 1879, Page 2

AN AMERICAN RESPONDING TO THE TOAST OF 'THE LADIES.'

eThe following was delivered by Mr Mavlc Tpin at the Correspondent's Club dinner, Washington " Mr. President,—l love the sex, I love all women, sir, irrespective of age or colour. (Laughter.) Mean intelligences cannot estimate what we owe to women, sir. She sews on our buttons, mends our clothes, she ropes us in at the church fairs, she confides 111 us, she tells us whatever she can find out about the little private affairs of the neighbours. (Laughter,) She gives us advice, and plenty of it; she gives a piece of her mind sometimes, and sometimes all of it. (Laughter.) Wherever you placo woman, sir, she is an 01 nament to that place which she occupies, and a treasure to the world. [Here the speaker paused, looking round on his hearers inquiringly,] The applause ought to come in at this point. (Great laughter.) Look at Cleopatra, look at Dcsdomona, look at Florence Nightingale, look at Lucretia Borgia. (Voices : 1 No, no.') Well, suppose you let Lucretia slide. (Laughter) Look at Mother Eve. (Cries of ' Oh, oh,' and laughter.) You need not look at her unless you want to ; but Eve was an ornament, sir, particularly before the fashion changed. (Renewed laughter.) I repeat, sir, look at the illustrious Widow Macliree, look at Lucy Stone, look at Elizabeth Stanton, look at George Francis Train—(great laughter)—and, sir, 1 say if with a bowed head and deep veneration, look at the mother of Washington, she ' dragged up' a boy that could not lie'! It might have been different had ho belonged to a Newpaper Correspondents' Club. (Groans, hisses, cries of ' put liitn out,' and laughter.) I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman, she is an ornament to society, and a treasure to the world. As a sweetheart she has few equals and no superiors, (Laughter.) As a cousin she is convenient; as a wealthy grandmother, with an incurable distemper, slieis unspeakably precious, What would the peoplo of the earth bo without woman ! Thoy would be scarce, sir, perfectly scarce, ("cnewed laughter,) Then let ns oherish her, lot lis protect her, and let us give her our support, our encouragement, our sympathy, ourselves if we get a chance. (Laughter.) But jesting aside, Mr President, woman is loveable, kind of heart, gracious, beautiful, worthy of all respect, of all defence. Not any here will refuse to drink her health right cordially in this goblet of wine, for each and overy one nf us has known, loved, arid honoured the best of thgm all—his mother." (Great applai\so f )