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have learned one important fact and, being of a generous disposition, 

 I propose to have you share this knowledge with me. The fact is this, 

 that, if a man wishes to become intimately acquainted with himself and 

 to learn that he has qualifications which he never before suspected, he 

 must attend the Annual Dinner of the Linnaean Society of New York. 

 We are told that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but from the 

 expose of myself made by a number of distinguished speakers, the fearful- 

 ness and wonder of my make-up would most certainly stagger the very 

 ancient prophet who expressed himself so intimately acquainted with the 

 internal arrangements of a Primate. 



"I am perfectly familiar with the pernicious custom of my fellow- 

 countrymen that, when two or three Americans are assembled together 

 one, certainly, and the whole of them, probably, will be expected to make 

 a speech; so that when I accepted my subpoena to appear here this evening 

 and receive sentence I felt that it was likely, though no intimation had 

 been given to me, I should be obliged to say something in defence of my 

 life and character; but I have been extremely busy in the last three weeks 

 thoroughly engaged in that which has occupied a large proportion of my 

 fellow-citizens, and with the assistance of some milhons of handkerchiefs 

 I have blown away nearly everything connected with my outer self, and 

 even the few ideas that had a lodgement in my head; so that I come before 

 you on this perilous occasion in a rather defenceless state with hardly a 

 notion as to what I am going to say to you, but if you will bear with me I 

 will talk to you in a familiar way upon such thoughts as may come to me 

 at the moment. And the one thought that occurs with particularly great 

 force as I look around upon this assembly and see so many ornithologists 

 and naturalists gathered here, is that I am instinctively carried back into 

 the long ago when New York and I were young. There is no one here 

 who remembers the time of which I am about to speak, for I am the sole 

 survivor of those days. 



"I do not suppose that my boyhood was different from that of any other 

 lad who had been inoculated with the virus that was to strengthen and 

 increase in power more and more with the passing years, until it should 

 dominate and control his entire Hfe. I began to make a collection of 

 birds — why I began I have no' idea, probably could not help it — and when 

 it verged toward completion I did not know what to do with it, for there 

 was no one of my age anywhere to be found who sympathized with me in 

 my pursuit, or with whom I could rejoice upon the acquisition of some 

 rare specimen; I was practically alone. My cousin Jacob Giraud, the 

 author of the 'Birds of Long Island,' had just entered upon the close of 

 his career, and wrote no more; Audubon, with decayed mental faculties 

 had entered upon the last year of his life; DeKay had died in Albany, 

 and in all the cities and within the boundaries of our great state there was 

 but one working ornithologist, George Newbold Lawrence, a man greatly 

 older than myself, whose sons were my friends and companions, but who 

 had not inherited their father's scientific taste, and their interest in birds 



