from Cambridge, and of these again twenty were from Emmanuel. So long as ideas rule the world let all the Universities of both countries stand together for truth, and with one voice let them say to the youth of both lands, 'Take fast hold of instruction. Let her not go, for she is thy life.' I am under deep obligations to the Dean and Chapter for consenting to receive and cherish this gift, and to Mr. LaFarge, the distinguished artist, for the noble manner in which he has designed and executed it."

On May 29 Mr. and Mrs. Choate called at Buckingham Palace and said good-by to the King and Queen, and on the next day they sailed for home.

CHAPTER IX

PRIVATE CITIZEN AND PUBLIC SERVANT

WELCOMED HOME BY THE PILGRIMS AND BY THE UNION LEAGUE CLUB -LAW PRACTICE-POLITICS-DINNERS-PUBLIC SERVICE-THE

SECOND HAGUE PEACE CONFERENCE-LETTERS FROM HOLLAND HIS OWN ACCOUNT OF THE CONFERENCE'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS—MR. SCOTT'S ESTIMATE OF MR. CHOate's part IN IT-OTHER COMMENTS -MR. CHOATE'S OPINION OF 'ALLIANCES" IN 1916-SUPPORTS

66

TAFT FOR THE PRESIDENCY-FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE-ADDRESSES ON CHARLES F. McKIM, FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE, AND MARK TWAIN -LINCOLN CENTENARY-DINNERS AND SPEECHES-LORD KITCHENER'S VISIT-PUBLISHES ENGLISH ADDRESSES-IN COURT-MR. SOUTHMAYD'S DEATH-EIGHTIETH BIRTHDAY-GOLDEN WEDDINGBACKING PRESIDENT WILSON-AN OCTOGENARIAN'S DAY

A large, distinguished, and lively company, including several Ambassadors, Lord Roberts, Mr. Bryce, Lady Lansdowne, and a score or more of others, saw Mr. Choate and his family off from Euston Station on May 30, 1905. He got to New York on the 8th of June and was welcomed on the 9th at a great dinner of the Pilgrims of the United States at the Waldorf-Astoria, with Bishop Potter in the chair. The Pilgrims should not be confused with the New England Society. The Pilgrims were of much more recent origin, with branches in New York and in London, and apparently with the general purpose to promote amity between the United States and Great Britain. It was an amusing dinner of course, with Bishop Potter and Mr. Choate both in excellent form. The Bishop told how when Mr. Choate was riding with a young woman in the Strand she asked him if he was not

Bishop Potter. That, he said, was the turning-point of Mr. Choate's life. Mr. Choate said he was once told he looked like Bishop Potter, and when he blushed, his informant said: "Oh, yes, sir; the likeness is wonderful, only the Bishop never looked half so clerical."

The more substantial part of Mr. Choate's address, not including this chaffing, is in the volume of his "American Addresses." He gave some account of his stewardship, speaking of the two Presidents that he had served under and of the two Monarchs, Queen Victoria and King Edward, with whom his office had brought him into relation. He also spoke of the "two great and difficult questions which threatened to disturb, and did in fact disturb, the perfect harmony which ought always to prevail," and which had been forever disposed of and set at rest. Those were the matters of the Alaska Boundary and the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. He spoke also of the need there was of providing a house for the American Ambassador in London, and forthwith it was proposed at the dinner to raise a fund for that purpose and subscriptions were offered; but nothing came of that, and of course the obstacle to providing permanent residences for our Ambassadors is not the cost, nor any scarcity of funds, but the difficulty of persuading Congress that it is a desirable thing to do.

Four nights later there was a dinner for him at the Union League Club, where there was much pleasant discourse, especially from Mr. Root.

Mr. Choate never retired from the practice of law. He took law cases after his return from England and continued to take them, but he never again spent himself in professional work as he had done before he became Ambassador.

In a letter written about a month

before he left England, in reply to a request that he should accept a retainer in an important case, he wrote:

"After fifty years of hard work I feel that I am entitled to a holiday and to lighter work hereafter. So I have long ago resolved not to plunge into the rough and tumble of the profession as I was always ready to do. At the same time I shall hardly be content to do nothing, and an occasional argument and acting as counsel out of Court would suit me better than to be idle. "I haven't seen much about Mr. -'s controversy, but I imagine it will involve great detail, and heaps of figures which were always my particular aversion, and are more so now than ever."

The day following his letter he cabled that he would accept a retainer when he got home.

So he did in a measure go back to professional work, and one saw him down-town and coming for his luncheon to the Down Town Club as in times past, but his most important calling in these later years of his life was to be a public institution, responsive constantly to appeals for speech or service for causes that seemed to him to deserve his help. When he got home from England he was seventy-four years old. As has appeared, he went on going to dinners and making discourse, which never ceased to be acceptable and never at all diminished in charm. In this year that he got home William Travers Jerome ran on an independent ticket for re-election as District Attorney because the regular party nominations for that office were not satisfactory. Mr. Choate pitched in ardently to help on Jerome's campaign.

He spent the summer in Stockbridge, and in October

one finds him coming to town again. He was the guest, along with General Horace Porter, of the Chamber of Commerce at luncheon on October 17. On October 21 he was the guest of honor at the dinner given by the Lotos Club. Writing to his daughter the next morning he says:

"Behold me in New York the morning after the Lotos dinner, up at sunrise and ready to take the 9.31 train on the Harlem which reaches State Line at 2, where I hope to be met by the motor.

"I enclose a very scattering account of the dinner from the morning Sun. There was a great deal of fun and good feeling, and if they wouldn't 'lay it on so thick' it would have been quite as enjoyable to me as it evidently was to them. But moderate praise and eulogy seems to be impossible here. I warned them against the killing pace at which everybody in New York is moving, and held up the example of the English courts and lawyers in working never more than eight weeks on a stretch and then having a vacation of ten days or a fortnight besides their ten weeks in the summer.

I

In that same speech, as reported in The Sun, he spoke of Mr. Hay, who had died, as one of the men whose names would stand imperishably in the annals of the American people, in the history of diplomacy, and in the history of the world. He also said: "While I was in England grew vain and proud of my country, when all the people surrounding me were growing prouder every day of the people who were descended from the same stock with them. The longer I stayed away the prouder I became of the land that gave me birth, and now that I have returned and studied the things I have seen, I believe it occupies the most promising position in the world."