ing addresses--in which others
would it have been inappropriate?

7. Prepare and deliver an after-dinner speech suited to one of the
following occasions, and be sure to use humor:

A lodge banquet.
A political party dinner.
A church men's club dinner.
A civic association banquet.
A banquet in honor of a celebrity.
A woman's club annual dinner.
A business men's association dinner.
A manufacturers' club dinner.
An alumni banquet.
An old home week barbecue.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: See also page 205.]

CHAPTER XXXI

MAKING CONVERSATION EFFECTIVE

In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.

--CATO.

Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.

--EMERSON, _Essays: Circles_.

The father of W.E. Gladstone considered conversation to be both an art
and an accomplishment. Around the dinner table in his home some topic of
local or national interest, or some debated question, was constantly
being discussed. In this way a friendly rivalry for supremacy in
conversation arose among the family, and an incident observed in the
street, an idea gleaned from a book, a deduction from personal
experience, was carefully stored as material for the family exchange.
Thus his early years of practise in elegant conversation prepared the
younger Gladstone for his career as a leader and speaker.

There is a sense in which the ability to converse effectively is
efficient public speaking, for our conversation is often heard by many,
and occasionally decisions of great moment hinge upon the tone and
quality of what we say in private.

Indeed, conversation in the aggregate probably wields more power than
press and platform combined. Socrates taught his great truths, not from
public rostrums, but in personal converse. Men made pilgrimages to
Goethe's library and Coleridge's home to be charmed and instructed by
their speech, and the culture of many nations was immeasurably
influenced by the thoughts that streamed out from those rich
well-springs.

Most of the world-moving speeches are made in the course of
conversation. Conferences of diplomats, business-getting arguments,
decisions by boards of directors, considerations of corporate policy,
all of which influence the political, mercantile and economic maps of
the world, are usually the results of careful though informal
conversation, and the man whose opinions weigh in such crises is he who
has fi