"]
MR. PRESIDENT:--Lastly, Satan came also, the printer's, if not
the public's devil, _in propria persona_! [Laughter.] The rest of you
gentlemen have better provided for yourselves. Even the Chamber of
Commerce took the benefit of clergy. The Presidential candidates and the
representatives of the Administration and the leading statesmen who
throng your hospitable board, all put forward as their counsel the
Attorney-General [Alphonso Taft] of the United States. And, as one of
his old clients at my left said a moment ago, "a precious dear old
counsel he was." [Laughter.]
The Press is without clergymen or counsel; and you doubtless wish it
were also without voice. At this hour none of you have the least desire
to hear anything or to say anything about the press. There are a number
of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that platform--I utterly
refuse to say whether I refer to Presidential candidates or not--but
there were a number of very able gentlemen who were ranged along that
table, who are very much more anxious to know what the press to-morrow
morning will have to say about them [laughter], and I know it because I
saw the care with which they handed up to the reporters the manuscript
copies of their entirely unprepared and extempore remarks. [Laughter.]
Gentlemen, the press is a mild-spoken and truly modest institution which
never chants its own praises.
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