7.  Prepare and deliver an after-dinner speech suited to one of the following occasions, and be sure to use humor: 

  A lodge banquet. 
  A political party dinner. 
  A church men’s club dinner. 
  A civic association banquet. 
  A banquet in honor of a celebrity. 
  A woman’s club annual dinner. 
  A business men’s association dinner. 
  A manufacturers’ club dinner. 
  An alumni banquet. 
  An old home week barbecue.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 35:  See also page 205.]

CHAPTER XXXI

MAKING CONVERSATION EFFECTIVE

    In conversation avoid the extremes of forwardness and reserve.

    —­CATO.

    Conversation is the laboratory and workshop of the student.

    —­EMERSON, Essays:  Circles.

The father of W.E.  Gladstone considered conversation to be both an art and an accomplishment.  Around the dinner table in his home some topic of local or national interest, or some debated question, was constantly being discussed.  In this way a friendly rivalry for supremacy in conversation arose among the family, and an incident observed in the street, an idea gleaned from a book, a deduction from personal experience, was carefully stored as material for the family exchange.  Thus his early years of practise in elegant conversation prepared the younger Gladstone for his career as a leader and speaker.

There is a sense in which the ability to converse effectively is efficient public speaking, for our conversation is often heard by many, and occasionally decisions of great moment hinge upon the tone and quality of what we say in private.

Indeed, conversation in the aggregate probably wields more power than press and platform combined.  Socrates taught his great truths, not from public rostrums, but in personal converse.  Men made pilgrimages to Goethe’s library and Coleridge’s home to be charmed and instructed by their speech, and the culture of many nations was immeasurably influenced by the thoughts that streamed out from those rich well-springs.

Most of the world-moving speeches are made in the course of conversation.  Conferences of diplomats, business-getting arguments, decisions by boards of directors, considerations of corporate policy, all of which influence the political, mercantile and economic maps of the world, are usually the results of careful though informal conversation, and the man whose opinions weigh in such crises is he who has first carefully pondered the words of both antagonist and protagonist.

However important it may be to attain self-control in light social converse, or about the family table, it is undeniably vital to have oneself perfectly in hand while taking part in a momentous conference.  Then the hints that we have given on poise, alertness, precision of word, clearness of statement, and force of utterance, with respect to public speech, are equally applicable to conversation.