ke it possible for the recluse to wield all the influence that
his powers may entitle him to exert. The metaphysician less than the
poet, the country minister less than the successful lawyer, is the
autocrat of the dinner-table.

Because Williams and Yale have produced great and useful men, it does
not follow that their commencement dinners are always marked by the
finest flow of wit and wisdom, nor that pioneers in civilization who
bring great honor to their alma mater should always and everywhere
speak for her. Dinner-speaking is a fine art, not one for which men
need absolutely European travel and study, but one which is never
mastered except by those who love and perhaps know how to reach all
the beautiful thoughts of every age and clime. It is the cultured
gentleman of social experience, who may or may not be a man of great
ability, but who knows how to weave the poetic and humorous and
commonplace into beautiful or grotesque forms, that delights and
surprises a dinner company. Social experience and good abilities will
not alone make the successful speaker. Underneath and back of all must
be the gentleman. A lawyer, though of splendid position, can ill
afford to say at the festal table of his alma mater, "Harvard takes
great poets and historians to fill her vacant professorships; my
college takes boys, who have proved their qualifications by getting
their windows broken." Those who go deeper than the surface will
perhaps surmise that Harvard has had better material to work upon than
some colleges; not perhaps material of finer abilities, but material
that has been more under the influence of sweetness and light.
Possibly her graduates are as superior at making dinner speeches as
are her trustees in choosing professors.

A gentleman must make the happy dinner-speech, for only he can
perceive the proprieties of the situation. He will neither improve the
occasion to give the corporation advice as to the management of the
college, nor try to point out to a company of Unitarians the superior
advantages of the orthodox faith, nor exhibit to invited guests the
rags of his alma mater's poverty. He may, perhaps, avoid the
commonplace by so doing, but he will certainly transgress the rules of
propriety. The commonplace at a dinner, repeated every year under so
nearly similar conditions, cannot be avoided, but can be transformed
by the art of the master.

What could be more difficult than the duty of presiding at the dinne