The people who make up the guests at a great dinner are the survival of the fittest of these various settlers in New York.
While thousands fail and go back home or drop by the way, these men have made their way by superior ability, foresight, and adaptability through the fierce competitions of the great city.
They are unusually keen-witted and alert. For the evening of the banquet they leave behind their business and its cares and are bent on being entertained, amused, and instructed. They are a most catholic audience, broad-minded, hospitabIe, and friendly to ideas whether they are in accord with them or not, providing they are well presented. There is one thing they will not submit to, and that is being bored.
These functions are usually over by midnight, and rarely last so long; while out in the country and in other towns, it is no unusual thing to have a dinner with speeches run along until the early hours of the next morning. While public men, politicians, and aspiring orators seek their opportunities upon this platform in New York, few succeed and many fail. It is difficult for a stranger to grasp the situation and adapt himself at once to its atmosphere. I have narrated in preceding pages some remarkable successes, and will give a few instances of very able and distinguished men who lost touch of their audiences.
One of the ablest men in the Senate was Senator John T. Morgan, of Alabama. I was fond of him personally and admired greatly his many and varied talents. He was a most industrious and admirable legislator, and a debater of rare influence. He was a master of correct and scholarly English, and one of the very few who never went to the reporters' room to correct his speeches. As they were always perfect, he let them stand as they were delivered.
Senator Morgan was a great card on a famous occasion among the many well-known men who were also to speak. Senator Elihu Root presided with his usual distinction. Senator Morgan had a prepared speech which he read. It was unusually long, but very good. On account of his reputation the audience was, for such an audience, wonderfully patient and frequent and enthusiastic in its applause.
Mistaking his favorable reception, Senator Morgan, after he had finished the manuscript, started in for an extended talk. After the hour had grown to nearly two, the audience became impatient, and the senator, again mistaking its temper, thought they had become hostile and announced that at many times and many places he had been met with opposition, but that he could not be put down or silenced. Mr. Root did the best he could to keep the peace, but the audience, who were anxious to hear the other speakers, gave up hope and began to leave, with the result that midnight saw an empty hall with a presiding officer and an orator.
At another great political dinner I sat beside Governor Oglesby, of Illinois. He was famous as a war governor and as a speaker.
There were six speakers on the dais, of whom I was one. Happily, my turn came early. The governor said to me: "How much of the gospel can these tenderfeet stand?" "Well, Governor," I answered, there are six speakers to-night, and the audience will not allow the maximum of time occupied to be more than thirty minutes. Any one who exceeds that will lose his crowd and, worse than that, he may be killed by the eloquent gentlemen who are bursting with impatience to get the floor, and who are to follow him.""Why," said the governor, "I don't see how any one can get started in thirty minutes.""Well," I cautioned, "please do not be too long."When the midnight hour struck the hall was again practically empty, the governor in the full tide of his speech, which evidently would require about three hours, and the chairman declared the meeting adjourned.
Senator Foraker, of Ohio, who was one of the appointed speakers, told me the next morning that at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, where he was stopping, he was just getting into bed when the governor burst into his room and fairly shouted: "Foraker, no wonder New York is almost always wrong. You saw to-night that it would not listen to the truth. Now I want to tell you what I intended to say." He was shouting with impassioned eloquence, his voice rising until, through the open windows, it reached Madison Square Park, when the watchman burst in and said: "Sir, the guests in this hotel will not stand that any longer, but if you must finish your speech I will take you out in the park."During Cleveland's administration one of the New York banquets became a national affair. The principal speaker was the secretary of the interior, Lucius Q. C. Lamar, who afterwards became United States senator and justice of the Supreme Court. Mr. Lamar was one of the ablest and most cultured men in public life, and a fine orator. I was called upon so late that it was impossible to follow any longer the serious discussions of the evening, and what the management and the audience wanted from me was some fun.
Lamar, with his Johnsonian periods and the lofty style of Edmund Burke, furnished an opportunity for a little pleasantry.
He came to me, when I had finished, in great alarm and said:
"My appearance here is not an ordinary one and does not permit humor. I am secretary of the interior, and the representative of the president and his administration. My speech is really the message of the president to the whole country, and I wish you would remedy any impression which the country might otherwise receive from your humor."This I was very glad to do, but it was an instance of which I have met many, of a very distinguished and brilliant gentleman taking himself too seriously. At another rather solemn function of this kind I performed the same at the request of the management, but with another protest from the orator and his enmity.
In reminiscing, after he retired from the presidency, Mr. Cleveland spoke to me of his great respect and admiration for Mr. Lamar.
