Mark Twain Speaking

68. Post-Prandial Oratory

230 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING tactic, he also accused the Britisher ofthe kind ofbragging for which he had reprehended Americans. Mark Twain apparently did not read Arnold's review, but took his cue from Fry's splenetic outburst; the sentence overloaded with confusing pronouns, which Mark Twain quoted in his dinner speech, was the same passage that Fry had singled out for disparagement.· 68 · For the amusement of 1,200 club members and guests attending a Boston Forefathers Day dinner, Mark Twain delivered what he called his "Patent Adjustable Speech," goodfor all occasions. He illustrated its possibilities by a manner that variedfrom gay to lugubrious, even to the simulation of copious tears. Post-Prandial Oratory Forefathers Day Dinner, Congregational Club, Music Hall, Boston, December 20, 1887 In treating of this subject of post-prandial oratory, a subject which I have long been familiar with and may be called an expert in observing it in others, I wish to say that a public dinner is the most delightful thing in the whole world, to a guest. That is one fact. And here is another one: a public dinner is the most unutterable suffering in the whole world, to a guest. These two facts don't seem to jibe-but I will explain. Now at a public dinner when a man knows he is going to be called upon to speak, and is thoroughly well prepared-got it all by heart, and the pauses all marked in his head where the applause is going to come in-a public dinner isjust heaven to that man. He won't care to be anywhere else than just where he is. But when at a public dinner it is getting way along toward the end of things, and a man is sitting over his glass of wine, or his glass of milk, according to the kind of banquet it is, in ever-augmenting danger of being called up, and isn't prepared, and knows he can never prepare with the thoughtless MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 231 gander at his elbow bothering him all the time with exasperating talky-talk about nothing, that man isjust as nearly in the other place as ever he wants to be. Why, it is a cruel situation. That man is to be pitied; and the very worst of it is that the minute he gets on his feet he is pitied . Now he could stand the pity of ten people or a dozen, but there is no misery in the world that is comparable to the massed and solidified compassion of five hundred. Why, that wide Sahara of sympathizing faces completely takes the tuck out of him, makes a coward of him. He stands there in his misery, and stammers out the usual rubbish about not being prepared, and not expecting, and all that kind of folly, and he is wandering and stumbling and getting further and further in, and all the time unhappy, and at last he fetches out a poor, miserable, crippledjoke, and in his griefand confusion he laughs at it himselfand the others look sick; and then he slumps into his chair and wishes he was dead. He knows he is a defeated man, and so do the others. Now to a humane person that is a heartrending spectacle. It is indeed. That sort of sacrifice ought to be stopped, and there is only one way to accomplish it that I can think of, and that is for a man to go always prepared, always loaded, always ready, whether he is likely to be called upon or not. You can't defeat that man, you can't pity him at all. My scheme is this, that he shall carry in his head a cut-and-dried and thoroughly and glibly memorized speech that will fit every conceivable public occasion in this life, fit it to a dot, and win success and applause every time. Now I have completed a speech of that kind, and I have brought it along to exhibit here as a sample. Now, then, supposing a man with his cut-and-dried speech, this patent adjustable speech, as you may call it, finds himself at a granger gathering, or·a wedding breakfast, or a theological disturbance or a political blowout, an inquest, or funeral anywhere in the world you choose to mention, and be suddenly called up, all he has got to do is to change three or four words in that speech, and make his...