ancy.

"We haven't all had the good-fortune to be ladies; we haven't all been
generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the
babies--we stand on common ground--"

The tired audience had listened in respectful silence through the first
half of the sentence. He made one of his effective pauses on the word
"babies," and when he added, in that slow, rich measure of his, "we
stand on common ground," they let go a storm of applause. There was no
weariness and inattention after that. At the end of each sentence, he
had to stop to let the tornado roar itself out and sweep by. When he
reached the beginning of the final paragraph, "Among the three or four
million cradles now rocking in the land are some which this nation would
preserve for ages as sacred things if we could know which ones they
are," the vast audience waited breathless for his conclusion. Step by
step he led toward some unseen climax--some surprise, of course, for
that would be his way. Then steadily, and almost without emphasis, he
delivered the opening of his final sentence:

"And now in his cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future illustrious
commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with
his approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole
strategic mind, at this moment, to trying to find out some way to
get his own big toe into his mouth, an achievement which (meaning
no disrespect) the illustrious guest of this evening also turned his
attention to some fifty-six years ago."

He paused, and the vast crowd had a chill of fear. After all, he seemed
likely to overdo it to spoil everything with a cheap joke at the end. No
one ever knew better than Mark Twain the value of a pause. He waited now
long enough to let the silence become absolute, until the tension was
painful, then wheeling to Grant himself he said, with all the dramatic
power of which he was master:

"And if the child is but the father of the man, there are mighty few who
will doubt that he succeeded!"

The house came down with a crash. The linking of their hero's great
military triumphs with that earliest of all conquests seemed to them so
grand a figure that they went mad with the joy of it. Even Grant's iron
serenity broke; he rocked and laughed while the tears streamed down his
cheeks.

They swept around the speaker with their congratulations, in their
efforts to seize his hand. He was borne up and down the great
dining