“So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that I might have been contented¹ with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion, whatsoever² and wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony³ to the national generosity⁴ and magnanimity. Also, to declare how astounded⁵ I have been by the amazing changes I have seen around me on every side—changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued⁶ and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities⁷ of life, changes in the Press, without whose advancement⁸ no advancement can take place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant⁹ as to suppose that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was here first. And this brings me to a point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United States last November, observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted¹⁰ to break it, but in reference to which I will, with your good leave, take you into my confidence now. Even the Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances observed its information to be not

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