might have come, as John Bright might have come, to receive the expressions of our gratitude for writing daily to his great constituency, on the side of our national life and unity when both were in peril. We had then in England few friends in power or in the press, but he was one of the truest and most useful. This journalist, poet, philosopher, and friend is with us tonight, and I have the pleasure of introducing to you Sir Edwin Arnold.1

4. Address by Chauncey M. Depew on presenting the loving cup to Admiral Dewey, January 9, 1900:

Admiral Dewey: Your countrymen are ever emulating each other in the conception and execution of something which will show their affection for and their gratitude to you. You were presented with a sword by an admiring and grateful country, with loving cups by municipalities and with medals by states; but all of these acts were essentially ceremonial in form.

What we do to-day is without ceremony or official character. It is simply the expression of seventy thousands of men, women, and children of our country in a simple way of their affection, respect for, and their pride in Admiral Dewey.

One of the significant things of our time is the influence of the newspaper, the power of the journal. The triumphs of Arctic exploration, scientific advancement, and beneficent reforms originate very often in the brains of the people who conduct these great powers of modern thought and who give expression to the general idea. It seems as if the myriad fingers by which the press reaches out and touches every form of opinion and feeling enables it also to concentrate in a happy way what all desire and give to it definite and material form. This had been done by the New York Journal, which suggested this cup for you, Admiral.

The artist who designed it has put in permanent and beautiful form the love of seventy thousands who contributed their ten cent pieces for the purpose of making this exquisite memorial.

If you were a politician, sir, and had aspiration for the Presidency, I fear this cup would be a serious bar to your advancement, because one of the critical, crucial dangers of the time, if we are to believe many newspapers and orators, is the contraction of the cur

1 Chauncey M. Depew. Orations, Addresses, and Speeches, III, p. 200.

rency, and here are, sir, actually seventy thousand dimes taken out of the circulating medium of the country.

But there is another significance in this gift. . . . Ever since the pocket came into use and fashion there has always been a pocket piece. This is a charm, carried for the purpose of warding off rheumatism and the devil, . . . and of promoting good fortune.

In this cup are melted up the dimes of a great many elderly people who had rounded out their successful lives and who thought that they would give to you their pocket pieces in the hope that they would do for you what they had done for themselves, that you would be free from what they had escaped, and that, besides, they would transfer to you good luck for the rest of your life. .

...

As you look at this cup during the years to come, you will know that the donors from every state, city, town, and hamlet of your country will have an interest in your home. From thousands of homes, in every prayer, morning and evening, there will be an aspiration for long life, health, and happiness for Admiral Dewey.

5. Portion of a response by William Ewart Gladstone, accepting a chair from the Liberals of the Borough of Greenwich:

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I am sure you will think I shall best discharge my duty if upon this occasion I confine myself to the briefest expression of thanks for this last and newest favor which the constituency of Greenwich has conferred upon me. The former favors have not been, and cannot be, forgotten; and, although our political connection as constituency and representative has been dissolved, yet you may rely upon it that my interest in your welfare, which was enhanced by that connection, can never disappear. I thank you greatly for this new mark of your enduring kindness. I accept it with peculiar joy and pleasure on this auspicious day, in the presence of Lord Granville, Lord Hartington, and all those colleagues to whose powerful coöperation it is that I owe my being able to appear before you with the conviction that I have not disgraced the functions with which, in common with them, I am charged.

6. Speech of Harry Johnson Fisher, presenting the Cheney-Ives Gateway to Yale University on behalf of the Class of 1896:

President Hadley and Yale Men: I am here as a representative

of the class of ninety-six, to present to you this gate. In its stone and iron it typifies the rugged manliness of those to whose lasting memory it has been erected. That is our wish. To you who are now gathered beneath these elms, and to those Yale men who shall follow after us, we wish this memorial to stand first of all for the manhood and courage of Yale. In the evening shadows the softer lights may steal forth and infold it, but through the daylight hours of toil and accomplishment let the sun shine down upon it, and bring out each line of strength, that every Yale man may be imbued with that dauntless spirit which inspired these two sons of Yale in their lives and in their deaths.

To the one came

We do not wish you merely to stand before this memorial and gaze upon it as a monument. We want every one of you, whether graduate at commencement time or undergraduate in term time, to come to it and to sit upon its benches, just as we of ninety-six shall come to sit during the advancing years, and, in the coming, keep always alive in our hearts the spirit of these two who did their work and held their peace, and had no fear to die. That is the lesson these two careers are singularly fitted to teach us. the keenest disappointment of staying behind, and after that the toil, the drudgery, and the sickness, all bravely borne. To the other it was given to meet death with that steadfast courage which alone avails to men who die in the long quiet after the battle. It is no new service these two have given to Yale. Looking back to-day through the heritage of two centuries, these names are but added to the roll of those who have served Yale because they have served their country.

The stone and iron of this gate will keep alive the names of these two men. It is our hope that the men of Yale will, in their own lives, perpetuate their manhood and courage.

7. Speech of acceptance of the Cheney-Ives Gateway, by Arthur Twining Hadley:

Of all the memorials which are offered to a university by the gratitude of her sons, there are none which serve so closely and fully the purposes of her life as those monuments which commemorate her dead heroes. The most important part of the teaching of a place like Yale is found in the lessons of public spirit and devotion to high ideals

which it gives. These things can in some measure be learned in books of poetry and of history. They can in some measure be learned from the daily life of the college and the sentiments which it inculcates. But they are most solemnly and vividly brought home by visible signs, such as this gateway furnishes, that the spirit of ancient heroism is not dead, and its highest lessons are not lost.

It seems as if the bravest and best in your class, as well as in others, had been sacrificed to the cruel exigencies of war. But they are not sacrificed. It is through men like those whom we have loved, and whom we here commemorate, that the life of the republic is kept alive. As we have learned lessons of heroism from the men who went forth to die in the Civil War, so will our children and our children's children learn the same lesson from the heroes who have a little while lived with us and then entered into an immortality of glory.

CHAPTER XXV

SPEECHES FOR SOCIAL OCCASIONS

Introduction. - Business men and others sometimes meet around a banquet table to discuss problems of a very serious nature. This is done for convenience and the discussion is of an informal and sometimes of an unsocial character. Speeches which might be delivered on such an occasion follow a law of their own and will not now be considered. The after-dinner speeches that we shall study are such as would be appropriate for a purely social occasion, one in which good-fellowship takes the place of antagonism, and appreciation of others is substituted for egotism.

In this chapter we shall learn: (1) the general characteristics of the after-dinner speech and (2) the special characteristics of three different sorts of speeches which might be given at a dinner.

I. GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE AFTER-DINNER

SPEECH

Unity. In the first place, the after-dinner speech should have a point or purpose, and should not consist merely of a string of stories. The speaker should confine himself to one idea well illustrated. It is said that the secret of Senator Hoar's popularity at the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa dinners was that his speeches contained one original idea, clearly stated, and one fresh story, well told. A story should be used merely to enforce a point which