The next day, Sunday, was spent quietly in visiting among our friends, and Monday we played the first game after our return on the Brooklyn grounds. The day was damp and cold and for that reason the crowd was comparatively a small one, there being only 4,000 people on hand to give us a welcome, but these made up in noise what they lacked in numbers and yelled themselves hoarse as we marched onto the grounds. Once again, after a hard-fought contest, we were beaten by a single run, All-America 7, Chicago 6 being the score.
At night we were given a banquet at Delmonico's by the New York admirers of the game, and it was a notable gathering of distinguished men that assembled there to do us honor, among them being A. G. Mills, ex-President of the National League, who acted as Chairman, Hon. Chauncey M. Depew, Hon. Daniel Dougherty, Henry E. Howland, W. H. McElroy, U. S. Consul; G. W. Griffin, who was representing the United States at Sydney when we were there; Mayor Chapin, of Brooklyn; Mayor Cleveland, of Jersey City; Erastus Wyman, Samuel L. Clemens ("Mark Twain"), and the Rev. Joseph Twitchell, of Hartford, Conn.; while scattered about the hall at various tables were seated representatives of different college classes, members of the New York Stock Exchange, the president and prominent members of the New York Athletic Club, and other crack athletic organizations of New York and vicinity, while in the gallery the ladies had been seated presumably for the purpose of seeing that we neither ate nor drank too much during the festivities.
Mr. Mills in his address reminded his hearers of the occasion that had brought them together and pronounced a glowing eulogy upon the game and its beauties and upon the players that had journeyed around the world to introduce it in foreign climes, and then called upon Mayor Cleveland of New Jersey, whose witty remarks excited constant laughter, and who wound up by welcoming us home in the name of the 20,000 residents of the little city across the river. Mayor Alfred Chapin of Brooklyn followed in a brief and laughter-provoking address, after which Chauncey M. Depew arose amid enthusiastic cheering and spoke as follows:
"Representing, as I do, probably more than any other human being, the whole of the American people who were deprived, by a convention that did not understand its duty, of putting me where I belong; and representing, as I do, by birth and opportunity, all the nationalities on the globe, I feel that I have been properly selected to give you the welcome of the world. I am just now arranging and preparing a Centennial oration which I hope may, and fear may not, meet all the possibilities of the 30th of April in presenting the majesty of that which created the government which we boast of and the land and country of which we are proud, but I feel that that oration is of no importance compared with the event of this evening. Washington never saw a base-ball game; Madison wrote the Constitution of the United States, and died without seeing one; Jefferson was the author of the Declaration of Independence, and yet his monument has no tribute of this kind upon it. Hamilton, the most marvelous and creative genius, made constitutions, built up systems and created institutions, and yet never witnessed a base-ball game. I feel as I stand here that all the men that have ever lived and achieved success in this world have died in vain. I am competent to pay that tribute, because I never played a game in my life, and I never saw it but once, and then did not understand it. A philosopher whom I always read with interest, because his abstractions sometimes approach the truth, wrote an article of some acumen several years ago, in which he said that you could mark the march of civilization and rise of liberty and its decadence by the interest which the nations took in pugilism. The nations of the earth which submit to the most grinding of despotisms have no pugilists. The nations of Europe which have never risen in their boasted establishments to a full comprehension of republicanism, have no pugilists. While Ireland and the Irish people, who can never be crushed, who have poetry, song and eloquence that belong to genius, have the most remarkable pugilists. England, which has a literature which is the only classic of to-day, which has an aristocracy and a form of government which is nearly democratic, has remarkable pugilists, and when you reach the seal of culture in America—Boston—you find the prince of pugilists. Now, that philosopher was right in the general principle, but wrong in the game. Civilization is marked, and has been in all ages, by an interest in the manly arts."
In conclusion Mr. Depew eulogized the returning tourists and-ended with a brilliant panegyric in favor of the National Game.
In responding to the toast, "The Influence of the Manly Sports," the Hon. Daniel Dougherty made a brilliant address in favor of outdoor games, after which President Spalding paid a compliment to the excellent conduct and ball-playing abilities of the two teams, and Captain Ward and myself made the briefest of remarks. Chairman Mills then introduced "Mark Twain," speaking of him as a native of the Sandwich Islands, which brought out the following address:
"Though not a native, as intimated by the chairman, I have visited the Sandwich Islands, that peaceful land, that beautiful land, that far-off home of profound repose and soft indolence, and dreamy solitude, where life is one long slumberous Sabbath, the climate one long, delicious summer day, and the good that die experience no change, for they but fall asleep in one heaven and wake up in another. And these boys have played base-ball there; baseball, which is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century. One cannot realize it, the place and the fact are so incongruous; it is like interrupting a funeral with a circus. Why, there's no legitimate point of contact, no possible kinship between base-ball" and the Sandwich Islands; base-ball is all fact, the Islands are all sentiment. In base-ball you've got to do everything just right, or you don't get there; in the Islands you've got to do everything all wrong, or you can't stay there. You do it wrong to get it right, for if you do it right you get it wrong; there isn't any way to get it right but to do it wrong, and the wronger you do it the righter it is.
"The natives illustrate this every day. They never mount a horse from the larboard side, they always mount him from the starboard; on the other hand, they never milk a cow on the starboard side, they always milk her on the larboard; it's why you see so many short people there, they've got their heads kicked off. When they meet on the road they don't turn to the right, they turn to the left. And so, from always doing everything wrong end first, it makes them left-handed and cross-eyed; they are all so. In those Islands, the cats haven't any tails and the snakes haven't any teeth; and, what is still more irregular, the man that loses a game gets the pot. As to dress, the women all wear a single garment, but the men don't. No, the men don't wear anything at all; they hate display; when they wear a smile they think they are overdressed. Speaking of birds, the only bird there that has ornamental feathers has only two, just only enough to squeeze through with, and they are under its wings instead of on top of its head, where, of course, they ought to be to do any good.
"The natives' language is soft and liquid and flexible, and in every way efficient and satisfactory till you get mad; then, there you are; there isn't anything in it to swear with. Good judges all say it is the best Sunday language there is; but then all the other six days of the week it just hangs idle on your hands; it isn't any good for business, and you can't work a telephone with it. Many a time the attention of the missionaries has been called to this defect, and they are always promising they are going to fix it; but no, they go fooling along and fooling along, and nothing is done. Speaking of education, everybody there is educated, from the highest to the lowest; in fact, it is the only country in the world where education is actually universal. And yet every now and then you run across instances of ignorance that are simply revolting, simply revolting to the human race. Think of it, there the ten takes the ace. But let us not dwell on such things. They make a person ashamed. Well, the missionaries are always going to fix that, but they put it off, and put it off, and put it off, and so that nation is going to keep on going down, and down, until some day you will see a pair of jacks beat a straight flush.
"Well, it is refreshment to the jaded, water to the thirsty, to look upon men who have so lately breathed the soft air of these Isles of the Blest, and had before their eyes the inextinguishable vision of their beauty. No alien land in all the world has any deep, strong charm for me but that one; no other land could so longingly and beseechingly tempt me, sleeping and waking, through half a life-time, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but that abides; other things change, but that remains the same. For me, its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun, the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ears. I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud rack. I can hear the spirits of its woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of the flowers that perished twenty years ago. And these world wanderers that sit before me here have lately looked upon these things, and with eyes of the flesh, not the unsatisfying vision of the spirit. I envy them that."