[Laughter.] You begin to realize how
naval officers sometimes have even gone so far as to throw up their
commissions. If Mr. Choate had seen Mr. Depew and myself under these
circumstances he would not have made those disparaging remarks which he
uttered to-night about the engorgement of our stomachs. If he had
turned those stomachs wrong side out and gazed upon their inner walls
through that opera-glass with which he has been looking so intently
lately upon Mrs. Langtry, he would have found that there was not even
the undigested corner of a carbuncular potato to stop the pyloric
orifice; he would have found upon those inner walls not a morsel of
those things which perish with using. [Laughter.]
But Mr. Choate must have his joke. He is a professional lawyer, and I
have frequently observed that lawyers' jokes are like an undertaker's
griefs--strictly professional. You begin now to sympathize with
everybody that ever went to sea. You think of the Pilgrim Fathers during
the tempestuous voyage in the Mayflower. You reflect how fully their
throats must have been occupied, and you can see how they originated the
practice of speaking through their noses. [Great laughter and applause.]
Why, you will get so nauseated before the trip is over at the very sight
of the white caps that you can't look at the heads of the French nurses
in Paris without feeling seasick.
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