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Title: Truthful Oratory; or, What Our Speakers Ought to Say
Author: Stephen Leacock [
More Titles by Leacock]
I
TRUTHFUL SPEECH GIVING THE REAL THOUGHTS OF A DISTINGUISHED GUEST AT THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY BANQUET OF A SOCIETY
Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: If there is one thing I abominate more than another, it is turning out on a cold night like this to eat a huge dinner of twelve courses and know that I have to make a speech on top of it. Gentlemen, I just feel stuffed. That's the plain truth of it. By the time we had finished that fish, I could have gone home satisfied. Honestly I could. That's as much as I usually eat. And by the time I had finished the rest of the food, I felt simply waterlogged, and I do still. More than that. The knowledge that I had to make a speech congratulating this society of yours on its fiftieth anniversary haunted and racked me all through the meal. I am not, in plain truth, the ready and brilliant speaker you take me for. That is a pure myth. If you could see the desperate home scene that goes on in my family when I am working up a speech, your minds would be at rest on that point.
I'll go further and be very frank with you. How this society has lived for fifty years, I don't know. If all your dinners are like this, Heaven help you. I've only the vaguest idea of what this society is, anyway, and what it does. I tried to get a constitution this afternoon but failed. I am sure from some of the faces that I recognise around this table that there must be good business reasons of some sort for belonging to this society. There's money in it,--mark my words,--for some of you or you wouldn't be here. Of course I quite understand that the President and the officials seated here beside me come merely for the self-importance of it. That, gentlemen, is about their size. I realized that from their talk during the banquet. I don't want to speak bitterly, but the truth is they are SMALL men and it flatters them to sit here with two or three blue ribbons pinned on their coats. But as for me, I'm done with it. It will be fifty years, please heaven, before this event comes round again. I hope, I earnestly hope, that I shall be safely under the ground.
II
THE SPEECH THAT OUGHT TO BE MADE BY A STATE GOVERNOR AFTER VISITING THE FALL EXPOSITION OF AN AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY
Well, gentlemen, this Annual Fall Fair of the Skedink County Agricultural Association has come round again. I don't mind telling you straight out that of all the disagreeable jobs that fall to me as Governor of this State, my visit to your Fall Fair is about the toughest.
I want to tell you, gentlemen, right here and now, that I don't know anything about agriculture and I don't want to. My parents were rich enough to bring me up in the city in a rational way. I didn't have to do chores in order to go to the high school as some of those present have boasted that they did. My only wonder is that they ever got there at all. They show no traces of it.
This afternoon, gentlemen, you took me all round your live-stock exhibit. I walked past, and through, nearly a quarter of a mile of hogs. What was it that they were called--Tamworths--Berkshires? I don't remember. But all I can say, gentlemen, is,--phew! Just that. Some of you will understand readily enough. That word sums up my whole idea of your agricultural show and I'm done with it.
No, let me correct myself. There was just one feature of your agricultural exposition that met my warm approval. You were good enough to take me through the section of your exposition called your Midway Pleasance. Let me tell you, sirs, that there was more real merit in that than all the rest of the show put together. You apologized, if I remember rightly, for taking me into the large tent of the Syrian Dancing Girls. Oh, believe me, gentlemen, you needn't have. Syria is a country which commands my profoundest admiration. Some day I mean to spend a vacation there. And, believe me, gentlemen, when I do go,--and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable,--I should not wish to be accompanied by such a set of flatheads as the officials of your Agricultural Society.
And now, gentlemen, as I have just received a fake telegram, by arrangement, calling me back to the capital of the State, I must leave this banquet at once. One word in conclusion: if I had known as fully as I do now how it feels to drink half a bucket of sweet cider, I should certainly never have come.
III
TRUTHFUL SPEECH OF A DISTRICT POLITICIAN TO A LADIES' SUFFRAGE SOCIETY
Ladies: My own earnest, heartfelt conviction is that you are a pack of cats. I use the word "cats" advisedly, and I mean every letter of it. I want to go on record before this gathering as being strongly and unalterably opposed to Woman Suffrage until you get it. After that I favour it. My reasons for opposing the suffrage are of a kind that you couldn't understand. But all men,--except the few that I see at this meeting,--understand them by instinct.
As you may, however, succeed as a result of the fuss that you are making,--in getting votes, I have thought it best to come. Also,--I am free to confess,--I wanted to see what you looked like.
On this last head I am disappointed. Personally I like women a good deal fatter than most of you are, and better looking. As I look around this gathering I see one or two of you that are not so bad, but on the whole not many. But my own strong personal predilection is and remains in favour of a woman who can cook, mend clothes, talk when I want her to, and give me the kind of admiration to which I am accustomed.
Let me, however, say in conclusion that I am altogether in sympathy with your movement to this extent. If you ever DO get votes,--and the indications are that you will (blast you),--I want your votes, and I want all of them.
[The end]
Stephen Leacock's short story: Truthful Oratory, or What Our Speakers Ought to Say
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