For some time I have had it in mind to make a speech.  I don’t know what I would say nor where I could possibly find an audience, but, in spite of all that, I feel that I’d like to try myself out on a speech.  I can’t trace this feeling back to its source.  It may have started when I heard a good speech, somewhere, or, it may have started when I heard a poor one.  I can’t recall.  When I hear a good speech I feel that I’d like to do as well; and, when I hear a poor one, I feel that I’d like to do better.  The only thing that is settled, as yet, about this speech that I want to make is the subject, and even that is not my own.  It is just near enough my own, however, to obviate the use of quotation-marks.  The hardest part of the task of writing or speaking is to gain credit for what some one else has said or written, and still be able to omit quotation-marks.  That calls for both mental and ethical dexterity of a high order.

But to the speech.  The subject is Dialectic Efficiency—­without quotation-marks, be it noted.  The way of it is this:  I have been reading, or, rather, trying to read the masterly book by Doctor Fletcher Durell, whose title is “Fundamental Sources of Efficiency.”  This is one of the most recondite books that has come from the press in a generation, and it is no reflection upon the book for me to say that I have been trying to read it.  It is so big, so deep, so high, and so wide that I can only splash around in it a bit.  But “the water’s fine.”  At any rate, I have been dipping into this book quite a little, and that is how I came upon the caption of my speech.  Of course, I get the word “efficiency” from the title of the book, and, besides, everybody uses that word nowadays.  Then, the author of this book has a chapter on “Dialectic,” and so I combine these two words and thus get rid of the quotation-marks.

And that certainly is an imposing subject for a speech.  If it should ever be printed on a programme, it would prove awe-inspiring.  Next to making a good speech, I’d like to be skilled in sleight-of-hand affairs.  I’d like to fish up a rabbit from the depths of an old gentleman’s silk tile, or extract a dozen eggs from a lady’s hand-bag, or transmute a canary into a goldfish.  I’d like to see the looks of wonder on the faces of the audience and hear them gasp.  The difficulty with such a subject as I have chosen, though, is to fill the frame.  I went into a shop in Paris once to make some small purchase, expecting to find a great emporium, but, to my surprise, found that all the goods were in the show-window.  That’s one trouble with my subject—­all the goods seem to be in the show-window.  But, I’ll do the best I can with it, even if I am compelled to pilfer from the pages of the book.