Excerpt from Complimentary Dinner to Stephen N. Gifford Esq., Clerk of the Massachusetts Senate: In Honor of His Twenty-Five Years' Service in That Capacity, Given by the Members of the Senate During That Period, at the United States Hotel, Boston, March 10, 1882 Dr. Johnson says, When there are a great many people, they come out Of church slowly: when there are a few, they come out easily. SO it is with ideas. When there is much crowding the mind, it is difficult to express it. I trust I shall not be slow; but, if you find a confusion of ideas, you must attribute it to the multiplicity of topics which crowd upon me. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.