Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-05-25

THE DINERS BEGAN TO LOOK
to show the guest Of honor that he
will undergo the misery of listening
to q few hundred thousand words Of
oratory Just to prove that he loves
the victim. 1t is the acid test. and
will say that any one who sits
through numerous speeches without
talking himself has shown that he
had love in vast quantities for the
guest OF honor.
How in the world any man ever got
1t into his head that no should say
more than he knows at a banquet lie
beyond me. and the fact that dry
country will discourage long-winded
speeding is to me a welcome fact.
Does any one suppose for single
minute that any after-dinner speaker
simply rises to his feet and tells
what was in his head at the time
he received the invitation to the din
ner? think not. What they really
do--and this is in the nature of a
confession-is something like this:
Having received an invitation to a
banquet, the prospective speaker calls
his Office boy, his stenographer, his
clerk and his laundryman and asks
each of them to call any friendly
dr,ov 1o ri,
assembled two or three hundred dray-
men. the happy orator Of the occa-
sion-to-be tells the said draymen to
go forth to all of the libraries, vet
Urinary surgeons offices, livery barns
old book stores, mail order houses
and fish markets and bring in all
of, the printed material on every
subject in the world that they can
find.
The crowd Of draymen go forth
and the prospective speaker begins
to map out his plan Of action. First
Of all, he calls up two or three reputa-
BILE physicians and asks them how
long 1t takes to talk man to death
in room filled with cigar smoke.
mayonnaise dressing and dirty nap
kins, provided all windows are closed.
Then. with this Information in hand,
he adds an hour to tho longest pos
sfble time that any man can survive
under those conditions and prepares
for his speech.
" h. Asrav ho 10
gun to arrive in his office ana he
lie very happy. Having obtained all
of the books, he makes them . speech,
by way of preliminary training, on
the wonderful patriotic service they
have done in helping him prepare
for this worlds greatest speech, and
then he dismisses them, usually, after
promising to pay their bills when his
speech obtains him a ten-million-
dollar retainer from the gas trust.
By this time the door Of his Office is
locked and he is vigorously eating a
cedar pencil. He thinks at frst that
he will write his speech in longhand,
digesting such information as he may
find in the books which have been
logged into him. After an hour or SO
OF this sort Of thing, however, he
finds that such an address would Of
necessity be limited to ten or fifteen
thousand words. SO he begins to clip
from the books and paste. OF course,
the books are not all on the same sub
ject, but this matters not at all to
an after-dinner speaker. He simply
takes all subjects. strings them on
his mental thread and then names the
result something like. THE Influence
Of Sawdust on the Aztecs." and pre-
pares to shoot.
Quite frequently the various sub
jects have no correlation with one an
other, but this is a matter Of the least
concern to the hardened after dinner
speaker. II some section of a book
that he has clipped and strung seems
wholly foreign to the subject. he SIM
ply says. "As Socrates said" or some-
thing like that, ana inserts the clip
ping. This always 10 safe; whenever
one mentions Socrates or anybody less
Interesting than TED Sloan. Charlie