BANQUET. 269 



yers who talked all day because they were well paid for talking, and tonight I have been 

 sitting here next to the dominie and the admiral who just talked without pay, and alongside 

 me was this fringe of shipbuilders, the whole table length, who also had some conversational 

 powers verging on monopoly, and between the entire bunch there was not much margin left 

 for a modest man for anything but mere absorption of other people's ideas. But now that 

 I am on my feet and have the right of way, I propose to take my own time and I want to 

 tell you] by vi^ay of encouragement, gentlemen, that I have at times spoken for an entire hour, 

 or even an hour and a half at a time, and with such constraining power that not a single au- 

 ditor has left even to make a suburban train. That is the truth; but half truths, gentlemen, 

 are very dangerous, sometimes misleading, and if you were to ask Mr. Schwab for the 

 whole of the truth he would tell you that when I made a speech of that character it was at 

 Riverside. And Riverside is the Sing Sing for Western Pennsylvania. 



Speaking of going to the penitentiary and making speeches — I will add that I like to 

 mingle with my fellow-men. I like to mingle with you business men, Mr. Secretary. I even 

 like to drop around to conventions of business men. We have a great many conventions in 

 my home town of Pittsburgh, and I might just as well add here, gentlemen, that Pittsburgh 

 is the most convenient place I know of for holding conventions. It is the one and only place 

 in the United States where everybody, from Boston to Richmond, and from St. Paul to St. 

 Louis, can reach in a sleeping car overnight. Providence and geography, gentlemen, made 

 Pittsburgh the convention city of the United States, and while I am glad this convention is 

 here in Philadelphia this year, it can't, of course, be held here next year, so I suggest that 

 you come out to Pittsburgh. We are interested in the Navy out there. We contribute to 

 its armor plate and to the ordinary ship plates that don't want armor, so come out the next 

 time you convene and we will show you where Mr. Schwab learned the shipbuilding busi- 

 ness, when he built steel barges of such minimum draught that all the water they needed 

 to run on was mountain dew. 



But returning to that "new freedom" that is in the air, and which I feel when I rise 

 from the substratum babel of my seat here at the table and my companions and have the 

 option of uncensored speech, I want to say that during the earlier part 'of this dinner and 

 while sitting between these companions, in silence, I have stored away some things that were 

 novel — almost startling. For when an admiral of the navy and a dominie of the church 

 get together, there is a mixture of things spiritual and nautical which makes one regret that 

 the stenographer in front of me had hot been recording the marine-heavenly converse on 

 this side of the table, that, when reproduced, would have made you feel that you, as well as lis- 

 tening I, had been floating round somewhere between the deep blue sea and its vis-a-vis. 

 But referring to this industrious shorthand gentleman in front of me reminds me that 

 his presence gives great comfort to one with a "made-on-the-spot speech" — and that is the 

 privilege of issuing a revised version. Now the speeches of these other gentlemen who fol- 

 low on the toboggan are already in print in the newspaper offices of the city. You can read 

 them all in the morning; papers and, what is worse, not one of them: can deny that he said 



