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But, although the first exuberance of youth may be behind me, I flatter myself with being still alive, wishing and hoping to live a little while longer, and to take more or less interest in the affairs of the living. [Applause.] Sweeping praise is, therefore, attended with some risk to those who utter it, for they do not know what may still be coming to make them sorry for what they have said.
Indeed, among the friends I see here there are many who now and then have—I will not say been angry with me—but who have seriously disagreed with me about the treatment of this or that public question. From the fact of their doing me the honor of being here, I may conclude—not, indeed, that they have changed their opinions, but that, holding the same opinions still, they have, in spite of those differences, some reason to believe me at least sincere in what I said and did. {Applause.] And I hope you will not think it too egotistical on my part when I say that in this belief they are not mistaken.
I have, doubtless, sometimes committed grave errors of observation or of judgment, but I may affirm that in my long public activity I have always sought to inform myself about the things I had to deal with, and that in my utterances on public interests I have never said anything that I did not myself conscientiously believe to be true. [Applause.] If this is the reason of your being here, I am proud, very proud of it; and I may promise you that this shall be so to the last, and that, in this respect at least, you will have a fair chance of not becoming sorry for the honor you are doing me to-night. [Applause.]
