AAA Coming of Age Dinner

K; infant , and fed him on pens, inkand paper for a year; and then we held the Championship Meeting at Birmingham. And the American nation came to our assistance ; they came over in1881 and we held the Cham­ pionship Meeting at Birmingham. Gentlemen, there was a little difficulty about that . Birmingham—a place which evennow we speak of with some awe, because it is a great place—Birmingham considered that six police­ men were enough for the Championship Meeting. We did not think so. The Mayor of Birmingham was a gentleman whose name begawnith a C ; I can say nothing more about him, I believe he afterwards went in for other pursuits (laughter). We felt some difficulty—it was not Joseph, it was one of his brethren. I have been discussing the matter with Lord JERSEYthis evening. Lord JERSEY,whom we put up to tackle the Mayor of Birmingham, tells me mI ade a mistake—it was not in Birmingham, but Warwickshire. But at any rate we had some difficulty about our Championship Meeting. You know the one thing we have ever prided ourselves upon is that we desire to keep order and see fair play at our Championship Meeting; and we thought if by any chance when the Americans were here there should be any difficulty about the crowd running across the ground, then we might not have existed. I went and saw Lord JERSEY and put my difficulties before him, and he got us out of the difficulty by securing altlhe assistance we required. We held a most successful Meeting in 1881 ; wehad the biggest assemblage, Ithink, until last year we ever saw at a Championship MeetinIgt .put us in funds' , and it made the country at large anthde world at large respect us for the way in which we conducted our Championship Meeting; andfrom that time until now I do not think we have ever goneone step backwards. Lord JERSEYrendered us yeoman assistance. Our President has told us that it was only an accidentthat put our President in the Chair insteadof Lord JERSEY,who is Ex-President . All I can say is this, speaking for myself, if we want to know who is to be our President , those two can settle it between themselves—we shalble very glad to have either of them. Well , at the end of three years, gentlemen, 1 didI, think, the only goodthing I ever did for the A.A.A. , 1 recommended a successor (nonsense), I recom­ mended to the notice of thtehen electors of theAssociation, Mr. CHARGES HERBERT. I had nursed the infant and taught tiot toddle, but since Mr. HERBERT has had it—and he has had it for eighteen years—this Associa­ tion has gained in credit and respect from one end of the country to the other and all the world over. 1 do not want to pursue its history further. Our objects have been simple : to hold a Championship Meeting and make it open to all comers anadll nations. And anyone who saw our Champion­ ship Meeting last year, and saw our own athletes take it with perfect good humour andperfect manliness, willknow the lessons we have been trying to teach for aquarter of a century havneot failed. We kept goodorder; we had attracted competitors from every part of the world, and we let every foreign athlete goaway with the opinion that every English athlete was a sportsman. Well , gentlemen, throughthose twenty-oneyears we have increased in numbers and experience, and I believe, in respect . I have