Private Dinner, Washington

I rise to propose to you one more sentiment; it must be my last; it consists of two words – ‘Good Night!’ Since I have been seated at this table I have received the welcome intelligence that the news from the dear ones has come at last – that the long-expected letters have arrived. Among them are certain scrawls from little beings across the ocean, of great interest to me, and I thought of them for many days past, in connexion with drowned men and a noble shop, broken up and lying in fragments upon the bottom of the ocean. But they are here, and you will appreciate the anxiety I feel to read them.

Permit me, in allusion to some remarks made by a gentleman near me, to say that every effort of my pen has been intended to elevate the masses of society; to give them the station they deserve among mankind. With that intention I commenced writing, and I assure you that as long as I write at all, that shall be the principal motive of my efforts. Gentlemen, since I arrived on your hospitable shore, and in my flight over your land, you have given me everything I can ask but time–that you cannot give me, and you are aware that I must devote some of it to myself. Therefore, with the assurance that this has been the most pleasant evening I have passed in the United States, I must bid you farewell, and once more repeat the words, Good Night!