Public Speaking: Principles and Practice Part 32

At a banquet in honor of General Grant, Chicago, 1877

BY SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain)

MR. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN,--"The Babies." Now, that's something like.

We haven't all had the good fortune to be ladies; 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 try to 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.

You soldiers all know that when that little fellow arrived at family headquarters, you had to hand in your resignation. He took entire command. You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not.

And there was only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the double-quick. When he called for soothing syrup, did you venture to throw out any remarks about certain services unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman? No; you got up and got it! If he ordered his pap bottle, and it wasn't warm, did you talk back? Not you; you went to work and warmed it. You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right!--three parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs. I can taste that stuff yet.

And how many things you learned as you went along! Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying, that when a baby smiles in his sleep it is because the angels are whispering to him.

Very pretty, but "too thin"--simply wind on the stomach, my friends. I like the idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself; one baby can furnish more business than you and your whole interior department can attend to; he is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. Do what you please you can't make him stay on the reservation. Sufficient unto the day is one baby. As long as you are in your right mind don't ever pray for twins. Twins amount to a permanent riot; and there ain't any real difference between triplets and insurrections.

Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in the land there are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred things, if we could know which ones they are. For in one of these cradles the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething; in another the future great historian is lying, and doubtless he will continue to lie until his earthly mission is ended. And in still one more cradle, somewhere under the flag, the future ill.u.s.trious 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 to which (meaning no disrespect) the ill.u.s.trious guest of this evening also turned his attention some fifty-six years ago! And if the child is but the prophecy of the man, there are mighty few will doubt that he succeeded.

THE OCCASIONAL POEM

CHARLES d.i.c.kENS

Read by Mr. Watson in New York, at the celebration of the d.i.c.kens Centenary, 1912. Reprinted from the public press.

BY WILLIAM WATSON

When Nature first designed In her all-procreant mind The man whom here tonight we are met to honor-- When first the idea of d.i.c.kens flashed upon her-- "Where, where" she said, "upon my populous earth Shall this prodigious child be brought to birth?

Where shall we have his earliest wondering look Into my magic book?

Shall he be born where life runs like a brook, Pleasant and placid as of old it ran, Far from the sound and shock of mighty deeds, Among soft English meads?

Or shall he first my pictured volume scan Where London lifts its hot and fevered brow For cooling night to fan?"

"Nay, nay," she said, "I have a happier plan For where at Portsmouth, on the embattled tides The ships of war step out with thundering prow And shake their stormy sides-- In yonder place of arms, whose gaunt sea wall Flings to the clouds the far-heard bugle call-- He shall be born amid the drums and guns, He shall be born among my fighting sons, Perhaps the greatest warrior of them all."

II

So there, where from the forts and battle gear And all the proud sea babbles Nelson's name, Into the world this later hero came-- He, too, a man that knew all moods but fear-- He, too, a fighter. Yet not his the strife That leaves dark scars on the fair face of life.

He did not fight to rend the world apart; He fought to make it one in mind and heart, Building a broad and n.o.ble bridge to span The icy chasm that sunders man from man.

Wherever wrong had fixed its bastions deep, There did his fierce yet gay a.s.sault surprise Some fortress girt with lucre or with lies; There his light battery stormed some ponderous keep; There charged he up the steep, A knight on whom no palsying torpor fell, Keen to the last to break a lance with h.e.l.l.

And still undimmed his conquering weapons shine; On his bright sword no spot of rust appears, And still across the years His soul goes forth to battle, and in the face Of whatso'er is false, or cruel, or base, He hurls his gage and leaps among the spears, Being armed with pity and love and scorn divine, Immortal laughter and immortal tears.

THE MARINERS OF ENGLAND

BY THOMAS CAMPBELL

Ye Mariners of England That guard our native seas!

Whose flag has braved, a thousand years, The battle and the breeze!

Your glorious standard launch again To match another foe: And sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow.

The spirit of your fathers Shall start from every wave, For the deck it is our field of fame, And Ocean was their grave: Where Blake and mighty Nelson fell Your manly heart shall glow, As ye sweep through the deep, While the stormy winds do blow; While the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow.

Britannia needs no bulwarks, No towers along the steep; Her march is o'er the mountain waves, Her home is on the deep.

With thunders from her native oak She quells the floods below, As they roar on the sh.o.r.e, When the stormy winds do blow; When the battle rages loud and long And the stormy winds do blow.

The meteor-flag of England Shall yet terrific burn; Till danger's troubled night depart And the star of peace return.

Then, then, ye ocean warriors!

Our song and feast shall flow To the fame of your name, When the storm has ceased to blow; When the fiery fight is heard no more, And the storm has ceased to blow.

CLa.s.s POEM

Read in Sanders Theater at the Harvard Cla.s.s Day Exercises, 1903.

Reprinted with permission.

BY LANGDON WARNER

Not unto every one of us shall come The bugle call that sounds for famous deeds; Not far lands, but the pleasant paths of home, Not broad seas to traffic, but the meads Of fruitful midland ways, where daily life Down trellised vistas, heavy in the Fall, Seems but the decent way apart from strife; And love, and work, and laughter there seem all.

War, and the Orient Sun uprising, The East, the West, and Man's shrill clamorous strife, Travail, disaster, flood, and far emprising, Man may not reach, yet take fast hold on life.

Let us now praise men who are not famous, Striving for good name rather than for great; Hear we the quiet voice calling to claim us, Heed it no less than the trumpet-call of fate!

Profit we to-day by the men who've gone before us, Men who dared, and lived, and died, to speed us on our way.

Fair is their fame, who make that mighty chorus, And gentle is the heritance that comes to us to-day.

They pulled with the strength that was in them, But 'twas not for the pewter cup, And not for the fame 'twould win them When the length of the race was up.

For the college stood by the river, And they heard, with cheeks that glowed, The voice of the c.o.xswain calling At the end of the course--"Well rowed!"

We have pulled at the sweep and run at the games, We have striven to stand to our boyhood aims, And we know the worth of our fathers' names; Shall we have less care for our own?

The praise of men they dared despise, They set the game above the prize, Must we fear to look in our fathers' eyes, Nor reap where they have sown?

Do we lose the zest we've known before?

The joy of running?--The kick of the oar When the ash sweeps buckle and bend?

Is the goal too far?--Too hard to gain?

We know that the candle is not the play, We know the reward is not to-day, And may not come at the end.

But we hear the voice of each bygone cla.s.s From the river's bank when our own crews pa.s.s, And the backs of the men are bowed, With a steady lift and a squandering strength, For the heave that shall drive us a nation's length, Till the c.o.xswain calls--"Well rowed."

Now all to the tasks that may find us-- To the saddle, the home, or the sea, Still hearing the voices behind us The voices that set us free; Free to be bound by our honor, Free to our birthright of toil, The masters, and slaves, of the nation, The Serfs, and the Lords, of the soil!

Proudly we lift the burdens That humbled the ages past, And pray to the G.o.d that gave them We may bear them on to the last;

That our sons and our younger brothers, When our gaps in the front they fill, May know that the cla.s.s has faltered not, And the line is even still.

Then out to the wind and weather!

Down the course our fathers showed, And finish well together, As the c.o.xswain calls--"Well rowed!"

A TROOP OF THE GUARD