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My time is of necessity brief, but I must spend a moment of it to say that I feel deeply the honor of being placed among those chosen to review the career and point out some of the great and varied public services of our distinguished friend,.

Those whose good fortune it has been, like mine, to be brought into personal relations with him, cannot regard him simply as a public man whose worth is to be estimated solely from that point of view. With them the heart claims lips and a tongue, for it has its own message to deliver, urgent as that of the mind. I for one would say to our friend to-night, as this goodly company meets to rejoice with him over his harvest of years, rich in unselfish service and in honors, that his simplicity of character, his fidelity to intellectual and moral convictions, his unfailing consideration and kindness, have won the warm and deep affection of those who, even like myself, have been associated with him but for a few years, and in a single branch of his public work—that which relates to the reform of the Civil Service.

We esteem and love him as a true friend, as well as honor him for what he has accomplished as citizen and statesman.