es; we have
not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the
toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground--for
we've all been babies. It is a shame that for a thousand years
the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he
didn't amount to anything! If you, gentlemen, will stop and
think a minute--if you will go back fifty or a hundred years, to
your early married life, and recontemplate your first baby--you
will remember that he amounted to a good deal--and even
something over.

"As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not," said
Demosthenes, "so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise
or foolish." Surely the occasional address furnishes a severe test of a
speaker's wisdom. To be trivial on a serious occasion, to be funereal at
a banquet, to be long-winded ever--these are the marks of non-sense.
Some imprudent souls seem to select the most friendly of after-dinner
occasions for the explosion of a bomb-shell of dispute. Around the
dinner table it is the custom of even political enemies to bury their
hatchets anywhere rather than in some convenient skull. It is the height
of bad taste to raise questions that in hours consecrated to good-will
can only irritate.

Occasional speeches offer good chances for humor, particularly the funny
story, for humor with a genuine point is not trivial. But do not spin a
whole skein of humorous yarns with no more connection than the inane and
threadbare "And that reminds me." An anecdote without bearing may be
funny but one less funny that fits theme and occasion is far preferable.
There is no way, short of sheer power of speech, that so surely leads to
the heart of an audience as rich, appropriate humor. The scattered
diners in a great banqueting hall, the after-dinner lethargy, the
anxiety over approaching last-train time, the over-full list of
over-full speakers--all throw out a challenge to the speaker to do his
best to win an interested hearing. And when success does come it is
usually due to a happy mixture of seriousness and humor, for humor alone
rarely scores so heavily as the two combined, while the utterly grave
speech _never_ does on such occasions.

If there is one place more than another where second-hand opinions and
platitudes are unwelcome it is in the after-dinner speech. Whether you
are toast-master or the last speaker to try to hold the waning crowd at
midnight