214 MASK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



says woman is extravagant in dress when he can look back and call to mind our simple and lowly 

 mother Eve arrayed in her modification of the Highland costume. (Roars of laughter.) Sir, women 

 have been soldiers, women have been painters, women have been poets. As long as language lives 

 the name of Cleopatra will live. And, not because she conquered George III. — (laughter) — but 

 because she wrote those divine lines — 



" ' Let dogs delight to bark and bite, 

 For Qod bath made them bo.' 



(More laughter.) The story of the world is adorned with the names of illustrious ones of our own 

 sex — some of them sons of St. ^ndrew, too — Scott, Bruce, Burns, the warrior Wallace, Ben Nevis — 

 (laughter) — the gifted Ben Lomond, and the great new Scotchman, Ben Disraeli.* (Great laughter.) 

 Out of the great plains of history tower whole mountain ranges of sublime women — the Queen of 

 Sheba, Josephine, Semiramis, Sairey Gamp ; the list is endless — (laughter) — but I will not call the 

 mighty roll, the names rise up in your own memories at the mere suggestion, luminous with the 

 glory of deeds that cannot die, hallowed by the loving worship of the good and the true of all epochs 

 and all climes. (Cheers.) Suffice it for our pride and our honor that we in our day have added to it 

 such names as those of Grace Darling and Florence Nightingale. (Cheers.) Woman is all that she 

 should be — gentle, patient, long suffering, trustful, unselfish, full of generous impulses. It is her 

 blessed mission to comfort the sorrowing, plead for the erring, encourage the faint of purpose, succor 

 the distressed, uplift the fallen, befriend the friendless — in a word, afford the healing of her sympa- 

 thies and a home in her heart for all the bruised and persecuted children of misfortune that knock 

 at its hospitable door. (Cheers.) And when I say, God bless her, there is none among us who has 

 known the ennobling affection of a wife, or the steadfast devotion of a mother but in his heart will 

 say. Amen ! (Loud and prolonged cheering.) 



* Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, at that time Prime MiniBter of England, had just been elected Lord Eector of Glasgow 

 trnlversity, and had made a speech which gave rise to a world of diBcueeion. 



