Wthe boston herald- 



- MONDAY, JUNE 30, m% 



AFTER-DINNER SPEAKING. 



"Fi-oiil a Beethoven ftiacral inareh to 

 a Strmiss waltz, or from a Mozart's Re- 

 (tuiem to Jim Crow,'' said a great com- 

 poser, "every isind of music is good but 

 the tedious." So with after-dinner 

 spealiing. The only sort to dread is the 

 dull and dragging, and to this end the 

 conductor of an orchestra, baton in 

 hatd, exercises no more important a 

 function than the pr;esiding ofBcer at a 

 public banquet. The conductor of a 

 concert sets the pace. If it is a re- 

 quiem he is interpreting, he must make 

 eTfery heart beat lilje a muffled drum; 

 if it is a dance of the fairies, he must 

 sebA the quicksilver and /electricity 

 Coursing through the veins. Equally 

 with the presiding officer at a dinner. 

 His peculiar orchestra, unhappily, is 

 too often made up of as motley a crew 

 Of raw recruits as Falstaff's regiment. 

 They hare herer drilled together before. 

 ^ r wonders are often effected 

 ivho is at once a modera- 

 ircelerator, a felicitous com- 

 biuatioii of biblical Jehu who ''drove 

 furiously" and of a Westinghouse air 

 brake, capable of making the most pon- 

 derous train pull up short on schedule 

 tim^ ^vhen it has reaehefl thi appointed 

 station! 



This whole matter, then, of after- 

 dinner speaking is one to whose fine 

 Simulation or dreadful depression the 

 American pilblic is so constantly sub- 

 jected— and that, too, under digestive 

 conditions which niay entail even fatal 

 < results— that if the "board of health" 

 [ doos not take it hygieinically in hand, 

 then certainly the daily press ought to. 

 If -musical experts are sent round as 

 reporting critics to all the concerts, to 

 make it clear to everybody just where 

 thfe first violin tripped and fell flat over 

 ft note, or the trombone groaned too 

 realistically like a stricken bull, or one 

 of the kettle drums flatly contradicted 

 the other, why sHould not the like be 

 (lone in respect to public dinners?— 

 done, too, under the full blaze of the 

 light of the "higher cHtlcism"? Ih no 

 other way can a atandard lae set and 

 maintained. 



Now, as a public dinner, to be pat- 

 ttirned after and to be treasured up in 

 ifiemory as a classic— that is, if the 

 roaring fun of Aristophanes is to be 

 held just as classic as the lofty strains 

 of Pindar— the Harvard commence- 

 ment dinner of last Wednesday will 

 long bold its own. Indeed, it is the 

 opprobrium of modern science and the 

 glaring proof of how far in the back- 

 woods we sttll are, that arrangements 

 eOnld not have been made beforehand 

 to have the whole scene — speakers* 

 liearers, 'rahs and all— at once audl- 

 jjhoned, vitascoped and fitted out with 



I a rotary crank, on the simple turning 

 of which everything would— for the bene- 

 fit of coming generations— leap out again 

 into sight and sound. Then, for at least 

 a week before evefy coming commence- 

 ment dinner, might the prospective 

 president and speakers daily be assem- 

 bled in Memorial Hall and, while 

 somebody turned the crank, their minds 

 be dnly impressed with just how to do 

 it by seeing and hearing how ex-.'^ee- 

 retary Long, President Roosevelt, Pres- 

 ident Eliot, Secretary Hay, Gov. Crane 

 and all the rest of ihem did it on this 

 historic occasion. But, alas! all this is 

 now as sadly past praying for as the 

 marriage of sweet Maud MuUer to the 

 belated judge. 



None the less, this especial dinner 

 will for years be talked about by those 

 who were happy enough to be present 

 at it. It furnished, moreover, an ad- 

 mirable opportunity for a reply to the 

 question. Which peculiar style of after- 

 dinner speaking is the most effective? — 

 a reply with the plump categorical as- 

 severation, "Every one of them but 

 the tedious!" Now this is a great les- 

 son to learn and to keep in mind. 

 Be your own self, all alone! There is 

 one glory of the 9un, another of the 

 moon, and another of the stars. The 

 elephant always makes a serious mis- 

 take when he essays to trip it mincingly 

 like the gazelle, as equally the gazelle 

 when he seeks to shake the continent 

 like the elephant. This, the animals of 

 the menagerie — unless sophisticated by 

 too long familiarity with man— never 

 dream of attempting. But public 

 speakers are forever doing it. Your 

 heavy, ponderous fellow thinks, like 

 Ariel, to put a girdle round the earth 

 in forty minutes, and is red in the face 

 and broken in wind before he has got 

 a hundred yards. Your touch-and-go, 

 hit-or-miss Mercutio of a speaker, who 

 is as delightful to watch rhetoricajly 

 as the elastic bounding of an India 

 rubber ball, undertakes to sit down as 

 solidly on his subject as though he were 

 a Gizah p;;Tamid on its subterranean 

 mnmmy king. 



Nothing of this was witnessed at Har- 

 vard. Each speaker was a typical speci- 

 men himself, and nobody else. Take, 

 for example, ex-Gov. Long. He was 

 presiding officer, hospitable toastmas- 

 ter of the occasion, privileged to call 

 attention to the especial flavor and 

 bouquet of each several vintage he pre- 

 sented, and he did it in a way to make 

 the sunlight shine through the ruby or 

 gold of the successive goblets he held up 

 to view, that was immensely provoca- 

 tive of an anticipatory smack of the 

 lip8, a^d all that purely rhetorically 



and without a tiice of violation of tSe^ 



Maine law. Then the speakers! What 

 a contrast in manner between President 

 Roosevelt and President Eliot: the first 

 belligerent, straight from the shoulder, 

 a rushing torrent; the second outwardljr 

 calm and self-repressed, but only as 

 water held back by a dam, or steaii 

 shut up in a steamchest. 



Each manner was admirable in its 

 way, each an agreeably-relieving change 

 from the other. But the manner of 

 manners to furnish a new study was 

 that of Secretary Hay. One had read 

 so much about him as the marvel- 

 lous charioteer of the east, able to 

 handle the ribbons and drive flve- 

 abreast Li Hung Chang, the Czar of 

 Russia, the Jlikado of Japan, the 

 Kaiser of Germany and John Bull 

 himself, without a single stallion of 

 them all kicking over the traces, that, 

 one was fully prepared for anything 

 that would present to sight a sort of 

 splendid cross between a Bismarck and 

 a Buffalo Bill. Not for an instant! A 

 delicate, fine-grained face, luminotisly 

 transparent with pure intellect, a face 

 through which thoughts and emotions, 

 as visibly coursed as fire through the 

 fibres of cotton wool — ^this was what 

 every eye Instinctively picked out, and 

 centred on from among all the eminent 

 men On the platform. Yes, that was 

 Secretary Hay, and not some fflystic 

 poet, as Would have heen the first inev- 

 itable surmise. And his speech was in 

 like vein— his body but the tran.slucont 

 revealer of the pure play of intellect 

 and feeling going on within. "Every 

 genuine style of public speech is good," 

 was the irrepressible commeiit when 

 he had finished, "but this is, perhaps, 

 the best of all. Certainly, it is the rtir- i 

 est." , , , _ . 



