Clemens,” and we shook hands. There was the usual momentary pause and then the General said: “I am not embarrassed—are you?”

It showed that he had a good memory for trifles as well as for serious things.

That banquet was by all odds the most notable one I was ever present at. There were six hundred persons present, mainly veterans of the Army of the Tennessee, and that in itself would have made it a most notable occasion of the kind in my experience but there were other things which contributed. General Sherman and in fact nearly all of the surviving great Generals of the war sat in a body on a dais round about General Grant.

The speakers were of a rare celebrity and ability.

That night I heard for the first time a slang expression which had already come into considerable vogue but I had not myself heard it before.

When the speaking began about ten o’clock I left my place at the table and went away over to the front side of the great dining room where I could take in the whole spectacle at one glance. Among others, Colonel Vilas was to respond to a toast and also Colonel Ingersoll, the silver-tongued infidel, who had begun life in Illinois, and was exceedingly popular there. Vilas was from Wisconsin and was very famous as an orator. He had prepared himself superbly for this occasion.

He was about the first speaker on the list of fifteen toasts and Bob Ingersoll was the ninth.

I had taken a position upon the steps in front of the brass band, which lifted me up and gave me a good general view. Presently I noticed, leaning against the wall near me, a simple-looking young man wearing the uniform of a private and the badge of the Army of the Tennessee. He seemed to be nervous and ill at ease about something. Presently, while the second speaker was talking, this young man said: “Do you know Colonel Vilas?” I said I had been introduced to him. He sat silent a while and then said: “They say he is hell when he gets started!”

I said: “In what way? What do you mean?”

“Speaking! Speaking! They say he is lightning!”

“Yes,” I said, “I have heard that he is a great speaker.”

The young man shifted about uneasily for a while and then he said: “Do you reckon he can get away with Bob Ingersoll?”

I said: “I don’t know.”

Another pause. Occasionally he and I would join in the applause when a speaker was on his legs, but this young man seemed to applaud unconsciously.

Presently he said, “Here in Illinois we think there can’t nobody get away with Bob Ingersoll.”

I said: “Is that so?”

He said, “Yes: we don’t think anybody can lay over Bob Ingersoll.”

Then he added sadly, “But they do say that Vilas is pretty nearly hell.”

At last Vilas rose to speak, and this young man pulled himself together and put on all his anxiety. Vilas began to warm up and the people began to applaud. He delivered himself of one especially fine passage and there was a general shout: “Get up on the table! Get up on the table! Stand up on the table! We can’t see you!” So a lot of men standing there picked Vilas up and stood him on the table in full view of the whole great audience and he went on with his speech. The young man applauded with the rest, and I could hear the young fellow mutter without being able to make out what he said. But presently when Vilas thundered out something especially fine, there was a tremendous outburst from the whole house and then this young man said in a sort of despairing way:

“It ain’t no use: Bob can’t climb up to that!”

During the next hour he held his position against the wall in a sort of dazed abstraction, apparently unconscious of place or of anything else, and at last when Ingersoll mounted the supper table his worshipper merely straightened up to an attitude of attention but without manifesting any hope.

Ingersoll with his fair and fresh complexion, handsome figure and graceful carriage was beautiful to look at.

He was to respond to the toast of “The Volunteers,” and his first sentence or two showed his quality. As his third sentence fell from his lips the house let go with a crash, and my private looked pleased and for the first time hopeful but he had been too much frightened to join in the applause. Presently, when Ingersoll came to the passage in which he said that these volunteers had shed their blood and perilled their lives in order that a mother might own her own child, the language was so fine, whatever it was, for I have forgotten, and the delivery was so superb that the vast multitude rose as one man and stood on their feet, shouting, stamping, and filling all the place with such a waving of napkins that it was like a snow storm. This prodigious outburst continued for a minute or two, Ingersoll standing and waiting. And now I happened to notice my private. He was stamping, clapping, shouting, gesticulating like a man who had gone truly mad. At last when quiet was restored once more, he glanced up to me with the tears in his eyes and said:

“Egod! He didn’t get left!”

My own speech was granted the perilous distinction of the place of honor. It was the last speech on the list, an honor which no person, probably, has ever sought. It was not reached until two o’clock in the morning. But when I got on my feet I knew that there was at any rate one point in my favor: the text was bound to have the sympathy of nine-tenths of the men present and of every woman, married or single, of the crowds of the sex who stood huddled in the various doorways.

I expected the speech to go off well—and it did.

In it I had a drive at General Sheridan’s comparatively new twins and various other things calculated to make it go. There was only one thing in it that I had fears about, and that one thing stood where it could not be removed in case of disaster.

It was the last sentence in the speech.

I had been picturing the America of fifty years hence, with a population of two hundred million souls, and was saying that the future President, Admirals and so forth of that great coming time were now lying in their various cradles, scattered abroad over the vast expanse of this country, and then said “And now in his cradle somewhere under the flag the future illustrious Commander-in-Chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeur and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth—something, meaning no disrespect to the illustrious guest of this evening, which he turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago”—

And here, as I had expected, the laughter ceased and a sort of shuddering silence took its place—for this was apparently carrying the matter too far.

I waited a moment or two to let this silence sink well home.

Then, turning toward the General I added:

“And if the child is but the father of the man there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.”

Which relieved the house: for when they saw the General break up in good-sized pieces they followed suit with great enthusiasm.

[A Call with W. D. Howells on General Grant]

Howells

1881.

Howells wrote me that his old father, who is well along in the seventies, was in great distress about his poor little consulate, up in Quebec. Somebody not being satisfied with the degree of poverty already conferred upon him by a thoughtful and beneficent Providence, was anxious to add to it by acquiring the Quebec consulate. So Howells thought that if we could get General Grant to say a word to President Arthur it might have the effect of stopping this effort to oust old Mr.