The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie and J. Berg Esenwein online

XXX AFTER-DINNER AND OTHER OCCASIONAL SPEAKING

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Come we then to-day in loyal love to sanctify our memories, to purify our hopes, to make strong all good intent by communion with the spirit of him who, being dead yet speaketh. Come, child, in thy spotless innocence; come, woman, in thy purity; come, youth, in thy prime; come, manhood, in thy strength; come, age, in thy ripe wisdom; come, citizen; come, soldier; let us strew the roses and lilies of June around his tomb, for he, like them, exhaled in his life Nature's beneficence, and the grave has consecrated that life and given it to us all; let us crown his tomb with the oak, the emblem of his strength, and with the laurel the emblem of his glory, and let these guns, whose voices he knew of old, awake the echoes of the mountains, that nature herself may join in his solemn requiem. Come, for here he rests, and

On this green bank, by this fair stream,
We set to-day a votive stone,
That memory may his deeds redeem?
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

--JOHN WARWICK DANIEL, on the unveiling of Lee's statue at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, 1883.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Why should humor find a place in after-dinner speaking?

2. Briefly give your impressions of any notable after-dinner address that you have heard.

3. Briefly outline an imaginary occasion of any sort and give three subjects appropriate for addresses.

4. Deliver one such address, not to exceed ten minutes in length.

5. What proportion of emotional ideas do you find in the extracts given in this chapter?

6. Humor was used in some of the foregoing addresses--in which others would it have been inappropriate?

7. Prepare and deliver an after-dinner speech suited to one of the following occasions, and be sure to use humor:

A lodge banquet. A political party dinner. A church men's club dinner. A civic association banquet. A banquet in honor of a celebrity. A woman's club annual dinner. A business men's association dinner. A manufacturers' club dinner. An alumni banquet. An old home week barbecue.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 35: See also page 205.]

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