Were it not for these addresses beautiful and rare,
we can believe that dinner speeches would be abandoned, or exchanged
for a single oration from one competent to delight.
For the distinguishing mark of the dinner speech should be that it
amuse not in the rough, coarse way of the demagogue, but in the
subtle, fine way of the man of culture.
The dinner speeches with which the readers of this paper are perhaps
most familiar, those made when the alumni of a noble college gather
around the table of their alma mater, ought to be characterized by the
broad sympathy, the quick insight, the flexible grace and the genial
humor of the thoroughly educated man. Although to make fine dinner
speeches can never be an aim worthy of an earnest man, yet to have the
power and culture from which such a speech usually comes, is the
highest aim in a literary regard that any man can have. It is a
short-sighted and one-sighted earnestness that despises the wit and
banter of society, and affects the isolation and grandeur of pure
thought. The mountain summit is too far removed from the walks of men
to make it possible for the recluse to wield all the influence that
his powers may entitle him to exert.
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