"gintlemen, I congratu-late yez wid a pride that
shoves the thumbs o' me into the arrum-holes of me
weshkit! At the inshtigation of the bowld O'Blowney--
axin' the gintleman's pardon--I am here wid
no silver tongue of illoquence to para-lyze yez, but
I am prisent, as has been ripresinted, to jine wid yez
in a stupendous waste of gunpowder, and duck-
shot, and 'high-wines,' and ham sandwiches, upon
the silvonian banks of the ragin' Kankakee, where
the 'di-dipper' tips ye good-by wid his tail, and the
wild loon skoots like a sky-rocket for his exiled
home in the alien dunes of the wild morass--or, as
Tommy Moore so illegantly describes the blashted
birrud,--

'Away to the dizhmal shwamp he spheeds--
His path is rugged and sore
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds
And many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And birrud niver flew before--
And niver will fly any more'


if iver he arrives back safe into civilization again--
and I've been in the poultry business long enough to
know the private opinion and personal integrity of
ivery fowl that flies the air or roosts on poles. But,
changin' the subject of my few small remarks here,
and thankin' yez wid an overflowin' heart but a dhry
tongue, I have the honor to propose, gintlemen, long