Every correspondent applying for an autograph should send a card or blank paper, in a stamped envelope, directed to himself (or herself). If he will not take the trouble to attend to all this, which he can just as well as to make the author do it, he must not expect the author to make good his deficiencies. [Accepted by acclamation].
Sending a stamp does not constitute a claim on an author for answer. [Received with loud applause]. The stamp may be retained by the author, or, what is better, devoted to the use of some appropriate charity, as for instance, the asylum for idiots and feeble-minded persons.
Albums. An album of decent external aspect may, without impropriety, be offered to an author, with the request that he will write his name therein. It is not proper, as a general rule, to ask for anything more than the name. The author may, of course, add a quotation from his writings, or a sentiment, if so disposed; but this must be considered as a work of supererogation, and an exceptional manifestation of courtesy.
Bed-quilt autographs. It should be a source of gratification to an author to contribute to the soundness of his reader's slumbers, if he cannot keep him awake by his writings. He should therefore cheerfully inscribe his name on the scrap of satin or other stuff (provided always that it be sent him in a stamped and directed envelope), that it may take its place in the patchwork mosaic for which it is intended.
Letters of admiration. These may be accepted as genuine, unless they contain specimens of the writer's own composition, upon which a critical opinion is requested, in which case they are to be regarded in the same light as medicated sweetmeats, namely, as meaning more than their looks imply. Genuine letters of admiration, being usually considered by the recipient as proofs of good taste and sound judgment on the part of his unknown correspondent, may be safely left to his decision as to whether they shall be answered or not.
The author of Elsie Venner thus excuses himself for opening the budget of the grievances of authors. "In obtaining and giving to the public this abstract of the proceedings of the association, I have been impelled by the same feelings of humanity which led me to join the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, believing that the sufferings of authors are as much entitled to sympathy and relief as those of the brute creation."
The birthday of the Emperor of Japan is the principal holiday of the year among his subjects, and as Saturday, November 3d, 1883, was the thirty-third anniversary of the birthday of Mutsuhito Tenno, the reigning Emperor, it was appropriately celebrated by the Japanese gentlemen in Boston. The Japanese department at the Foreign Exhibition was closed, and in the evening a banquet was given at the Parker House, about sixty gentlemen assembling in response to the invitation of Mr. S.R. Takahashi, chief of the imperial Japanese commission to the Boston Foreign Exhibition. The entrance to the banquet rooms was decorated with the Japanese and American colors, and at the head of the hall were portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Japan, with the colors of that country between them. The occasion was a very enjoyable one, and was especially interesting as it was a departure from the custom at ordinary dinners here, several gentlemen dividing with the presiding officer the duty of proposing the toasts. One of the most delightful orations of the evening given by Oliver Wendell Holmes, was as follows:
"I have heard of 'English' as she is spoke," being taught in ten lessons, but I never heard that a nation's literature could have justice done to it in ten minutes. An ancestress of mine—one of my thirty-two great-great-great-great-grandmothers—a noted poetess in her day, thus addressed her little brood of children:
Alas! my birds, you wisdom want
Of perils you are ignorant;
Ofttimes in grass, on trees, in flight,
Sore accidents on you may light;
Oh, to your safety have an eye,
So happy may you live and die.