he were less in earnest his filial affection could not possibly
allow him to be here.
It is therefore enough for me, gentlemen, and enough for you, that
I should say here, and now, that we all unite with one accord in
regarding the Oxford crew as the pride and flower of England – and
that we should consider it very weak indeed to set anything short
of England’s very best in opposition to or competition with
America; though it certainly must be confessed – I am bound in
common justice and honour to admit it – it must be confessed in
disparagement of the Oxford men, as I heard a discontented
gentleman remark – last Friday night, about ten o’clock, when he
was baiting a very small horse in the Strand – he was one of eleven
with pipes in a chaise cart – I say it must be admitted in
disparagement of the Oxford men on the authority of this gentleman,
that they have won so often that they could afford to lose a little
now, and that “they ought to do it, but they won’t.”
Gentlemen, in drinking to both crews, and in offering the poor
testimony of our thanks in acknowledgment of the gallant spectacle
which they presented to countless thousands last Friday, I am sure
I express not only your feeling, and my feeling, and the feeling of
the Blue, but also the feeling of the whole people of England, when
I cordially give them welcome to our English waters and English
ground, and also bid them “God speed” in their voyage home. As the
greater includes the less, and the sea holds the river, so I think
it is no very bold augury to predict that in the friendly contests
yet to come and to take place, I hope, on both sides of the
Atlantic – there are great river triumphs for Harvard University
yet in store. Gentlemen, I warn the English portion of this
audience that these are very dangerous men. Remember that it was
an undergraduate of Harvard University who served as a common
seaman two years before the mast, and who wrote about the best sea
book in the English tongue. Remember that it was one of those
young American gentlemen who sailed his mite of a yacht across the
Atlantic in mid-winter, and who sailed in her to sink or swim with
the men who believed in him.
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
And now, gentlemen, in conclusion, animated by your cordial
acquiescence, I will take upon myself to assure our brothers from a
distance that the utmost enthusiasm with which they can be received
on their return home will find a ready echo in every corner of
England – and further, that none of their immediate countrymen – I
use the qualifying term immediate, for we are, as our president
said, fellow countrymen, thank God – that none of their compatriots
who saw, or who will read of, what they did in this great race, can
be more thoroughly imbued with a sense of their indomitable courage
and their high deserts than are their rivals and their hosts tonight.
Gentlemen, I beg to propose to you to drink the crews of
Harvard and Oxford University, and I beg to couple with that toast
the names of Mr. Simmons and Mr. Willan.
SPEECH: BIRMINGHAM, SEPTEMBER 27, 1869.
[Inaugural Address on the opening of the Winter Session of the
Birmingham and Midland Institute.
One who was present during the delivery of the following speech,
informs the editor that “no note of any kind was referred to by Mr.
Dickens – except the Quotation from Sydney Smith. The address,
evidently carefully prepared, was delivered without a single pause,
in Mr. Dickens’s best manner, and was a very great success.”]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, – We often hear of our common country that it
is an over-populated one, that it is an over-pauperized one, that
it is an over-colonizing one, and that it is an over-taxed one.
Now, I entertain, especially of late times, the heretical belief
that it is an over-talked one, and that there is a deal of public