LOTOS CLUB DINNER IN HONOR OF MARK TWAIN

Too Long; Didn't Read

ADDRESS AT THE FIRST FORMAL DINNER IN THE NEW CLUB-HOUSE, NOVEMBER 11, 1893 In introducing the guest of the evening, Mr. Lawrence said: “To-night the old faces appear once more amid new surroundings. The place where last we met about the table has vanished, and to-night we have our first Lotos dinner in a home that is all our own. It is peculiarly fitting that the board should now be spread in honor of one who has been a member of the club for full a score of years, and it is a happy augury for the future that our fellow-member whom we assemble to greet should be the bearer of a most distinguished name in the world of letters; for the Lotos Club is ever at its best when paying homage to genius in literature or in art. Is there a civilized being who has not heard the name of Mark Twain? We knew him long years ago, before he came out of the boundless West, brimful of wit and eloquence, with no reverence for anything, and went abroad to educate the untutored European in the subtleties of the American joke. The world has looked on and applauded while he has broken many images. He has led us in imagination all over the globe. With him as our guide we have traversed alike the Mississippi and the Sea of Galilee. At his bidding we have laughed at a thousand absurdities. By a laborious process of reasoning he has convinced us that the Egyptian mummies are actually dead. He has held us spellbound upon the plain at the foot of the great Sphinx, and we have joined him in weeping bitter tears at the tomb of Adam. To-night we greet him in the flesh. What name is there in literature that can be likened to his? Perhaps some of the distinguished gentlemen about this table can tell us, but I know of none. Himself his only parallel!”