The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1924-05-04

Irwin s. Cobb, southern humorist is
never so happy as when talking to his
own people. At the recent annual dinner
of the New York Southern society. Mr..
Cobb was one of the chief speakers,
his remarks being as follows:
Ladies, Mr.. President, and members
of the New York Southern Society and
their guests: 1t seemed for awhile that
this dinner would start off suspicious
~. AT the beginning, very appropriate
ly, we drank the toast to our Presi-
dent-in cracked ice. Then Martin Lit
Teton spoiled everything by intimating
that my best efforts at humor made
the world cry.
It's lamentable characteristic of
that pestersome breed known as after
dinner speakers that Immediately upon
getting on their feet before the groan-
ing board-and you can spell bored
either way-they should be reminded
of a story. Now, confess that am no
exception to the run of the breed,
too. am forcibly reminded of a story.
Back in those old, ancient bygone
days when public drinking was still
engaged in by certain careless citizens
of this now thoroughly reformed and
altogether sober and godly land, gen.
tleman suffering acutely from what
technically was known as q hangover
you may have heard your grandfathers
use the word? wandered into a cheap
short-order restaurant in Memphis-or
as Senator McKeiiar's constituents
would call it, "a snack Standard
slumped down in a chair in q despon-
dent heap and bent a wan and blood
shot eye upon the flyspecked menu,
then cast it from him and pressed his
feverish palms to his trrobbing temples.
An affable darky floated up to him
and said:
BOSS. whut's is goin to be this
mornin'?'
He replied: well, 1 tell you, feel
SO rotten that the very thought of
food appals me. All want is two fried
eggs and a few kind words from some
body.
"Lemme see eff gifts dat order right
Whut you Graves frum me is two fried
aigs and some kind words?"
The customer said That's the idea"
The negro hurried away and present
ly came back with a. steaming platter
and said, as he placed the eggs be-
fore the patron BOSS. there is part of
de order and here is de rest of it.: Do
not eat them!'
Now, 1 take it that what tonight is
expected from me will be a few kind
words-kind, if possible. but in any
event, few. Personally, am glad to
meet this expectation because have
discovered that it is harder these times
to hold the attention of water-logged
audience. saturated to the Plimsolls
with White Rock and rapidly going
down by the head. than it was those
former times when a reorganization in
company was a social error instead of
being a mark of affluence, and when
the gesture of an Arkansas gentleman
toward his hip pocket was to be in
terpreted as a threat instead of prom
Use, as at present / need hardly add
that refer to that period of our ma
ti6nal history prior to the dawn of
that blessed day when the Volstead Act
began to make America safe for n.y.
pocrisy. ,...
1t wasn't so very hard, those times,
to put over a burst of oratory. A man
who had acquired a pleasing dizziness
and a breath like hot mince pie was
temperamentally attuned to turn an
dItcHIiNc car upon LnOBe IllRnIS OF I'M
passioned, silver-tongued, golden edged
eloquence such as Martin Littleton can
emit to order by the running front
foot in half mile lengths-with special
rates to indicted malefactors of great
wealth remember once down in Sa-
vannah 1 attended a dinner given in
honor of a party of touring New York
and New England financiers and, to
top off, the hosts of the occasion had
provided plentiful store of eighteen
year-old Kentucky bourbon, mellowed
in the wood. As look back on it now,
it seems to me it was one of the
pleasantest dinners 1 ever drank. Now.
the chief figure among the guests, the
head of the delegation and its chosen
spokesman, was a hard-boiled Boston
bank PRESIDENT typical money chang
er with those side-whiskers which are
a mans own fault and an eye in his
head like an undertaker's night bell.
To look at him you would have said
that inside his soul it was always snow
ing hard. But after taking his first
drink of that liquor he said, dreamily
and softly, that he wished somebody
would take him down a bayou in a
canoe so that he might hear the mock
ing-bird's evening song and catch the
distant PUNK of the banjo from some
far-off negro cabin and see the Span
ish moss dangling in the moonlight from