Los Angeles herald., 1908-04-21
IN HIS FUNNY SPEECH

Rev. r. J. Burdette made a speech in
his usual happy vein. He said:
"Our guests, and ours till death us
| do part" Like a good conundrum you
| have kept us guessing a long time but
having been guest we can never give
you up. Under the oaks of Mamre,
| when the world was young and wicked
Abraham entertained angels unawares
Now the world has grown old and good
as is the manner of some people who
! become religious when they are too old
and tired and weak to be bad any
longer, a whole "City of Angels gladly,
! joyouSly, ha-halariously entertains six.
teen shiploads of fighting men whose
business and pleasure it is to make
angels of the people who dislike us and
show it too plainly OF all the Won
drous, mighty glorious spectacles that
| ever drifted over the seas to our coasts
we never saw such fleet before. You
our guests, meet us with equal wonder
and admiration, for in all your Ulysses
like wanderings over many seas you
| never saw such town before. We ad-
NIT it. So far you have sailed along
the California coast and you have not
seen a fort; you have not seen a shore
battery. We do not need them in
| Southern California. We do not want
any fortifcations. We do. not try to
| keep people out. We strive to draw
| them in. Once in they are ours. Come
they in peace or in war, they lie down
with the bear, and are gently, sweetly
! wholesomely assimilated. They become
| Californians. Whether the invader
comes in red war paint or perfumed
reckle-and-sunburn lotion, in private
car or tourist sleeper, we do not say
as he disappears, "One Bostonian less"
We say, "One hundred and seventy
pounds more bear" And then we turn
! the bears open countenance toward the
|
! him again" Thus do we grow, nour-
1shed alike by foe and friend. Every
thing is fish that comes to our net-in
| Lent, whether 1T wear scales, wool,
bristles or feathers. When the first
great labor disunion struck work on
the tower of Babel, because they
! couldn't agree on a dictionary, all the
delegates came to California. And we
have been speaking harmoniously the
tongues of all the world ever since.
That's why our enemies accuse us of
talking too much. But we have so
much to talk about. We had just
fairly begun discussing a plan for
establishing liquor zone with re-
stric-ed and unlimited boundaries, so
arranged that prohibitionist couldn't
find it and whisky men couldn't miss
| it, when you came along. And we
| showed the jug under the bed behind
the saddle, till we learned your habits
That's why we put the price of sherry
up to $50 a pint for this banquet. For
we said, IF a man doesn't drink tea
spoonful of it it will be enough to souse
| him. And if he is liable to drink too
much he can't afford it. And if he has
already had too much, when we tell
him the price it will sober him before
the shock can kill him"
AS the admiral remarked to me:
Bob" he says, the simple fact is
you've had vocal target practice. Talk
is cheap where climates DEAR" says he.
Beloved and honored guests of ours,
you will never know, for we can
never tell you, even with all our
rich and varied California vocabulary
and we've spilled a great deal of the
English language over you tonight
how welcome you are. We of Califor-
mia know a good ship when we see it.
We are old salts ourselves. We have
great deserts of it. We use it in the
mining business We may be new, but
we are not fresh.
oh, the seas how they roar how they roar,
Breezy promoters how they blow
While we oily sailor boys are working on the
tourist
And the land lubbers lying down below,
with the land lubbers lying down below.
Three times to sea went our jolly. jolly
Three times and out went She
And a stout little tug towed her back into
| the slip
with hot box. melted journal. jammed
screw, broken shaft. slipped eccentric,
collapsed 1ue. broken shaft, choked
mud valve, cylinder heads blown out
governor thrown off, safety valve
| clogged, rudder unshipped,
| And her bob-stay hanging where her
| spanker ought to be.
Back aft, where her spanter ought to be-
Tells of Famous Trip
We built a ship out on this coast one
time and she made her trial trip with
guns and men aboard. Like Jobs war
horse, the Oregon "smelled the battle
afar off, and the white foam cleaned
about her bows as she reeled the coast
lines off like trailing log line through
the multiplied leagues of blue water
going "to meet the armed men," and
when the battle broke at the appointed
time, To- amid thunder of the captains
and the shouting the oregon roared
among the trumpets, Ha, ha." How
the world shouted its applause at her
wonderful run. Other ships, under
other flags had run nearly that far and
nearly that fast to get out of fight,
but the Oregon carried full steam
ahead to get into one And while men
admired, our sailor men said ANY
ship in the fleet could do it" And
when men doubted the great COM
mander- n-chief of the army and navy
said, "WeIl just show you foreign
born Missourians," and 10, here you are
sixteen ships on the old ships log,
yo, ho-ho and a bottle of milk"-all the
| thousands of miles on a schedule timed
| by chronometers and the sun, and
Theodore Roosevelt is justified of his
| boast The president knew his ships
and he knew his admirals and his cap
tains and all his sailor men. [ have
heard a naval maxim THE speed of
the squadron is the speed of the sloWest
ship" We face the world now, shout
ing: "What the best of our ships can
do well, the poorest can do better"
don't know where the armor belt of
battleship should bel can't draw pic
tures-whether it should be high as
upper G or down at G below. But |
believe this, that the foreign ship that
tries to find out will never know We
have lowered every flag that ever hut-
tered a battle signal at us on the seas,
when the only armor belt on our ships
was a sailors shirt, and that was open
at the breast. Welcome, you! Wei
come to us landsmen as was the sea
with the sun kissing its 'innumerable
laughter" to the Greeks of Xenophon.
"A hundred thousand Welcomes" To
paraphrase Paul Jones, 1--WE have not
yet begun to Welcome!"
The decorations at the fleet banquet
represented the superlatiVe in the for
lists and electricians arts.
From the 10000 roses, the 5000 carna-