compliments and to introduce me forgot the compliments, and did not know
what they were.
And George Augustus Sala came in at the last moment, just when I was
about to go without compliments altogether. And that man was a gifted
man. They just called on him instantaneously, while he was going to sit
down, to introduce the stranger, and Sala, made one of those marvellous
speeches which he was capable of making. I think no man talked so fast
as Sala did. One did not need wine while he was making a speech. The
rapidity of his utterance made a man drunk in a minute. An incomparable
speech was that, an impromptu speech, and–an impromptu speech is a
seldom thing, and he did it so well.
He went into the whole history of the United States, and made it entirely
new to me. He filled it with episodes and incidents that Washington
never heard of, and he did it so convincingly that although I knew none
of it had happened, from that day to this I do not know any history but
Sala’s.
I do not know anything so sad as a dinner where you are going to get up
and say something by-and-by, and you do not know what it is. You sit and
wonder and wonder what the gentleman is going to say who is going to
introduce you. You know that if he says something severe, that if he
will deride you, or traduce you, or do anything of that kind, he will
furnish you with a text, because anybody can get up and talk against
that.
Anybody can get up and straighten out his character. But when a
gentleman gets up and merely tells the truth about you, what can you do?
Mr. Austin has done well. He has supplied so many texts that I will have
to drop out a lot of them, and that is about as difficult as when you do
not have any text at all. Now, he made a beautiful and smooth speech
without any difficulty at all, and I could have done that if I had gone
on with the schooling with which I began. I see here a gentleman on my
left who was my master in the art of oratory more than twenty-five years
ago.
When I look upon the inspiring face of Mr. Depew, it carries me a long
way back. An old and valued friend of mine is he, and I saw his career
as it came along, and it has reached pretty well up to now, when he, by
another miscarriage of justice, is a United States Senator. But those
were delightful days when I was taking lessons in oratory.
My other master the Ambassador-is not here yet. Under those two
gentlemen I learned to make after-dinner speeches, and it was charming.
You know the New England dinner is the great occasion on the other side
of the water. It is held every year to celebrate the landing of the
Pilgrims. Those Pilgrims were a lot of people who were not needed in
England, and you know they had great rivalry, and they were persuaded to
go elsewhere, and they chartered a ship called Mayflower and set sail,
and I have heard it said that they pumped the Atlantic Ocean through that
ship sixteen times.
They fell in over there with the Dutch from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and a
lot of other places with profane names, and it is from that gang that Mr.
Depew is descended.
On the other hand, Mr. Choate is descended from those Puritans who landed
on a bitter night in December. Every year those people used to meet at a
great banquet in New York, and those masters of mind in oratory had to
make speeches. It was Doctor Depew’s business to get up there and
apologise for the Dutch, and Mr. Choate had to get up later and explain
the crimes of the Puritans, and grand, beautiful times we used to have.
It is curious that after that long lapse of time I meet the Whitefriars
again, some looking as young and fresh as in the old days, others showing