its shackles. ["Hear! Hear!"] I know that the discharge of this duty is
attended by one great, one special peril. And in thinking particularly
of the younger generation of dramatists, those upon whom the immediate
future of our drama depends, I cannot help expressing the hope that they
will accept this freedom as a privilege to be jealously exercised, a
privilege to be exercised in the spirit which I have been so
presumptuous as to indicate.

It would be easy by a heedless employment of the latitude allowed us to
destroy its usefulness, indeed to bring about a reaction which would
deprive us of our newly granted liberty altogether. Upon this point the
young, the coming dramatist would perhaps do well to ponder; he would
do well, I think, to realize fully that freedom in art must be guarded
by the eternal unwritten laws of good taste, morality, and beauty, he
would do well to remember always that the real courage of the artist is
in his capacity for restraint. [Cheers.] I am deeply sensible of the
honor which has been done me in the association of my name with this
toast, and I ask your leave to add one word--a word of regret at the
absence to-night of my friend, Mr. Toole, an absence unhappily
occasioned by an illness from which he is but slowly recovering. Mr.
Toole charges me to express his deep disappointment at being prevented
from attending this banquet. He does not, however, instruct me to say
what I do say heartily--that Mr. Toole fitly represents in any
assemblage, his own particular department of the drama; more fitly
represents his department than I do mine. I know of no actor who stands
higher in the esteem, who exists more durably in the affection of those
who know him, than does John Lawrence Toole.


[Illustration: _HORACE PORTER_