Suitability is the big thing in an occasional speech.  When Mark Twain addressed the Army of the Tennessee in reunion at Chicago, in 1877, he responded to the toast, “The Babies.”  Two things in that after-dinner speech are remarkable:  the bright introduction, by which he subtly claimed the interest of all, and the humorous use of military terms throughout: 

Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen:  “The Babies.”  Now, that’s something like.  We haven’t all had the good fortune to be ladies; we have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground—­for we’ve all been babies.  It is a shame that for a thousand years the world’s banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if he didn’t amount to anything!  If you, gentlemen, will stop and think a minute—­if you will go back fifty or a hundred years, to your early married life, and recontemplate your first baby—­you will remember that he amounted to a good deal—­and even something over.

“As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not,” said Demosthenes, “so men are proved by their speeches whether they be wise or foolish.”  Surely the occasional address furnishes a severe test of a speaker’s wisdom.  To be trivial on a serious occasion, to be funereal at a banquet, to be long-winded ever—­these are the marks of non-sense.  Some imprudent souls seem to select the most friendly of after-dinner occasions for the explosion of a bomb-shell of dispute.  Around the dinner table it is the custom of even political enemies to bury their hatchets anywhere rather than in some convenient skull.  It is the height of bad taste to raise questions that in hours consecrated to good-will can only irritate.

Occasional speeches offer good chances for humor, particularly the funny story, for humor with a genuine point is not trivial.  But do not spin a whole skein of humorous yarns with no more connection than the inane and threadbare “And that reminds me.”  An anecdote without bearing may be funny but one less funny that fits theme and occasion is far preferable.  There is no way, short of sheer power of speech, that so surely leads to the heart of an audience as rich, appropriate humor.  The scattered diners in a great banqueting hall, the after-dinner lethargy, the anxiety over approaching last-train time, the over-full list of over-full speakers—­all throw out a challenge to the speaker to do his best to win an interested hearing.  And when success does come it is usually due to a happy mixture of seriousness and humor, for humor alone rarely scores so heavily as the two combined, while the utterly grave speech never does on such occasions.