I have been leading a quiet and wholesome life now during two entire banqueteering, speech-making seasons. These seasons begin in September and last until the end of April; it is half a year. Banquets run late, and by the end of the season the habitual banqueteer is haggard and worn, facially, andⒶtextual note drowsy in his mind and weak on his legs. Three seasons ago I was still keeping up the banqueteering habit—a habit which had its beginning in 1869 or ’70 and hadⒶtextual note been continued season by season, thereafter, over that long stretch of thirty-five or thirty-six years. I renounced that habit on the 29th of April, three seasons ago. I had been banqueteering and making speeches two or three times in every week for six monthsⒺexplanatory note; I had tried to get out of this soul-wearingⒶtextual note slavery every year for a long time, but had failed of my desire through the adoption of a mistaken system—the system of tapering off, used by hard drinkers. I said I would limit myself to three banquets in the season. This was naturally a mistake, for when a weak person has said yes once he hasn’t grit enough to say no the rest of the time—but I adopted a better policy on that 29th of April just referred to; I took what may be called the teetotaler’sⒶtextual note pledge, and said I would not attend speech-making banquets any more. That pledge has saved me, and has given me a quiet and peaceful life; I think I have not broken it more than three times since I made it.

I broke it last night, and am not at all likely to break it again for a twelvemonth. I had good reasons for breaking it last night—I wanted to see some more of Andrew Carnegie, who is always a subject of intense interest for me. I like him; I am ashamed of him; and it is a delight to me to be where he is if he has new material on which to work his vanities where they will show him off as with a lime-light. The banquet last night was given him by the Associated Societies of Engineers, a wonderful organization with a membership of fifteen thousand engineers of all sorts and kinds, an organization whose industries cover every department of that extraordinaryⒶtextual note trade; that trade which by help of the inventor, has created the marvel of the ages—this modern material civilization of ours. Two hundred and fifty members were present, and not an unintellectual face visible anywhere—a most remarkable body of men to look at. The oldest member present, Mr. Fritz, aged eighty-six, hale and hearty, was the revolutionizer of the steel industries of the United States—a small affair when he took hold of it with Mr. HolleyⒺexplanatory note, but now vast almost beyond the power of figures to compute. Edison was there, looking young and plump; and there were others of high distinction present. The dinner was in honor of Mr. Carnegie, who had given to the Associated Societies their great building and the land it stands upon in 39th streetⒶtextual note, a present which cost his pocket-book twelve hundred thousand dollarsⒺexplanatory note.

[begin page 190] I wonder what the banquet will be a century from now. If it has not greatly improved by that time it ought to be abolished. It is a dreadful ordeal, and in my long experience it has shown not a shade of improvement; I believe it is even worse now than it was a generation ago. The guests gather at half pastⒶtextual note seven in the evening, and stand and chat half an hour and weary themselves with the standing and the chatting; then they march out in procession, in double file, with the chairman and the chief guest in the lead, and the crashing and deafening clamor of the music breaks out; the guests seat themselves and begin to talk to each other softly, sanely, thenⒶtextual note a little louder, and a little louder, and still a little louder, each group trying to make itself heard above the general din, and before long everybody is shrieking and shouting; knivesⒶtextual note and forksⒶtextual note and platesⒶtextual note are clattering, and a man might as well be in pandemonium as far as personal comfort is concerned. This used to continue an hour and a half; then at half pastⒶtextual note nine the speaking began, and continued for an hour; then the insurrection ceased and the survivors went home. Years ago, in order to save my life, I adopted the system of feeding at home, then starting to the banquet in time to reach it when the banquet was over and the speaking ready to begin—say at half pastⒶtextual note nine; then leaving the place, upon one pretext or another, as soon as I had emptied my speech upon the assembled sufferers. But nowadays the menu is so intolerably long that the speaking is not likely to begin until fully ten o’clock, so I asked them not to come for me before ten and to allow me as early a place as they could in the list of speakers, so that I could get back home at a reasonable hour. But they came for me at nine, which cheered me and charmed me, because I supposed it meant that the banquet was about over. It was a mistake. I arrived at a quarter past nine, and the feeding was not over until a quarter to eleven. Then the intellectual labors of the evening began; the speeches of the chairman and Mr. Carnegie and Mr. Fritz occupied, altogether, thirty-five minutes; then I spoke ten minutes, and got away at half pastⒶtextual note eleven, leaving behind me half a dozen speakers still to be heard from. It is likely that the last one did not finish before one o’clock.

I hope I shall not see another banquet in this life until Mr. Carnegie is chief guest again. He made a good speech—sound, sensible, to the point, not a minute too long; and it had humor in it, and also quite distinct traces of modesty—but that was because it was a prepared speech and memorized; he had the typewritten manuscript on the table before him, but I did not see him refer to it; he trusted to his memory, and it was not strictly faithful to him; it failed him a couple of times when he tried to quote poetical passages from Kipling; they were forceful, and would have been very effective if he had reeled them off easily and comfortably, but as he was obliged to stop in the middle of them and stand and wait, and think, their effectiveness oozed out and was lost—but there was no other defect in his speech, and it was received with high and vociferous approval. When he sat down, Mr. Fritz was called up and read a quiet speech of considerable length, from manuscript, and sat down. Apparently it was my turn now, but there was an interruption—a framed certificate of honorary membership was brought forward to be presented to Mr. Carnegie by Mr. Fritz. The chairman held the big frame up where all the house could see it, and explained what it was, and everybody cheered; [begin page 191] then Mr. Carnegie rose and from his low altitude beamed up at the tall and stately Fritz, and reached up and took him by the hand and said,

“I will not call him Mister, it is too distant; he is not Mister to us, he is Uncle John,” whereat everybody shouted approval, and one man shouted “Unser Fritz,” and the house took that up and re-shouted it—Mr. Fritz has German blood in his veins—and altogether the incident was very pleasing and stirring. The little episode was highly dramatic, and if Mr. Carnegie had sat down then he would have scored the triumph of the evening; but no, he was Carnegie, and that could not happen. He was Carnegie, and being Carnegie of course he was bursting to tell about his recent contact with the Emperor of Germany. He played the same casualness that he had played upon me in his palace the other day, andⒶtextual note in just about the same words—certainly in the same spirit. He pretended that he had been on the point of sittingⒶtextual note down, but had suddenly remembered something—which was an acted lie; without any doubtⒶtextual note he had come there intending to tell about himself and the EmperorⒶtextual note, and he hadn’t forgotten about it at all; it was fresh and boiling and steaming in his mind all the time; he was only waiting for a chance. He said, ever so casually—

“Oh I forgot to tell you about my recent reception by the Emperor of Germany.”

I don’t see how a man of such principled and practisedⒶtextual note veracity as Carnegie can lie in that easy and comfortable way and look just as if it came natural to him to do it.Ⓐtextual note He went on at great length and told about the meeting with the Emperor in almost exactly the same words in which he had detailed it to me in his palace. I know that one sentence,Ⓐtextual note at least, was in precisely the same words which I had heard him utter on that occasion; to wit,

“His MajestyⒶtextual note said, ‘Ah well, Mr. Carnegie, I know you. I have read all your books, and I know you hate kings.’ I said, ‘AhⒶtextual note yes, your MajestyⒶtextual note, I am certainly a democrat of the democratsⒶtextual note. I do hate kings; but, your MajestyⒶtextual note, I admire and revere the man behind the king, when he is a man, and that is what your MajestyⒶtextual note is.’ ”Ⓐtextual note

I could see that Mr. Carnegie was tired and worn with the daily and hourly repetition of his encounter with the Emperor, and that his stupendous pride and joy in that imperial attention was shortening his life with pure ecstasy—but dear me, how full of it he was! How delighted he was to expose himself to those people while imagining that he was deceiving them all the time! He filled his talk with his brave scorn of royalties, and those people cheered those handsome and intrepid remarks to the echo, and in their kindness of heart they never once betrayed their perception of the fact that his only reason for remembering to tell them about that contact was that he might brag about it and intoxicate himself with it, and send them home filled with the immortal glory of having seen with their own eyes a man who had talked face to face with an emperor.

He was interrupted by the heartiest applause all the way through, and by and by he made a hit that almost fetched the house to its feet—and perhaps a hundred did rise and wave their napkins at him, while every man present made all the noise he could. Carnegie ought to have sat down then, but it wouldn’t have been Carnegie if he had done that; [begin page 192] when he is happy he can’t stop, he has to go on and wind up with an anti-climax—and that is what he did.

Well then we had some music, and at last the chairman called me up.

I said I had been chief guest myself, several times, and knew by experience what this one was suffering. He had said himself that he was embarrassed by the chairman’s splendid compliments. I said that that was always what happened to the chief guest, and that it was a pity that he should be so treated; there ought always to be some friend present humane enough to act as devil’s advocate in the preliminaries of a beatification and do the guest the kindness of calling some little attention to the uncomplimentable side of his career and character, since no man, not even Mr. Carnegie, has led a life that is wholly free from crime. I said,

“Look at him where he sits, his face softly, sweetly, benignantly scintillating with the signs and symbols of a fictitious innocence. Is he free from crime? Look at his pestiferous Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note Ⓔexplanatory note! It has disordered the minds of this whole nation and brought upon this people sorrow and disaster in a hundred forms; it has broken up families; it has ruined households; it produced the San Francisco earthquake; it has brought the vast industries of this country to a standstill and spread a blight of commercial stagnation and undeserved poverty, hunger, nakedness and suffering from Florida to Alaska and from the Great Lakes to the Gulf—and not even the solar system has escaped; the sun is blanketed as never before with sun-spots—sun-spots which will bring upon us cyclones, hurricanes, electrical storms of all descriptions throughout the coming year; and the astronomers lay all this to Mr. Carnegie’s pernicious Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note. He has attacked orthography at the wrong end; he has attacked the symptoms, not the disease itself. The real disease is in the alphabet: there is not a vowel in it that has a definite and permanent and inalterable value, and sometimes a consonant is placed where it has no value at all. The h in honor, honesty, gherkin, and in a multitude of other words, has no value, and it ought to be flung out; in wheat and which and what, and so on, it is misplaced: it should be the first letter of the word, not the second, for the sound of the h precedes the sound of the w; we don’t say w-heat, we say h-weat; it isn’t w-hich, it is h-wich—and so on. The consonants that begin mnemonics and pneumonia, and three of the consonants in phthisis, are wasted—and so on. Adequate reform would give each consonant a sole and definite office to perform, and restrict it to that. Adequate reform would give each vowel and its modifications a sole and definite office to perform, and restrict it to that. Then you wouldn’t have to be taught spelling, you would only need to be taught the alphabet—then every word that fell upon your ear would instantly andⒶtextual note automatically spell itself. After three hours’ labor in mastering that reformed alphabet you could promptly and correctly spell every word in the Unabridged DictionaryⒶtextual note with your eyes shut; whereas by reason of the immeasurable silliness of our present alphabet there isn’t a man in this house that doesn’t have to leave fifteen hundred words out of his correspondence every day because he doesn’t know how to spell them—yet he spent many weary weeks, and many, many dreary months of his life trying to learn how to spell; it’s as idiotic as trying to do a St. Vitus dance with wooden legs. Is there anybody here [begin page 193] that knows how to spell pterodactyl? No, not one. Except perhaps the prisoner at the bar. God only knows how he would simplify it. When he got done with it you wouldn’t know whether it was a bird or a reptile, and the chances are that he would give it tusks and a trunk and make it lay eggs.

“AⒶtextual note system of accents assigning to each vowel its special and sole and definite shade of sound would enable us to spell rationally and with precision all kinds of words, let them come from what language they might; and that would be real Ⓐtextual note simplifying, thorough simplifying, competent simplifying—not inadequate and half wayⒶtextual note simplifying by removing the hair, cauterizing the warts, lancing the tumors, medicating the cancers—leaving the old thing substantially what it was before, only bald-headedⒶtextual note and unsightly. If I ask you what b-o-w spells you can’t answer till you know which bow I am referring to; the same with r-o-w; the same with sore, and bore, and tear, and lead, and read—and all the rest of that asinine family of bastard words born out of wedlock and don’t know their own origin and nobody else does; and if I ask you to pronounce s-o-w, instead of promptly telling me, as you would if we had a sane and healthy and competent alphabet instead of a hospital of compound comminuted cripples and eunuchsⒶtextual note in the place of it,Ⓐtextual note you have to waste time asking me which sow I mean, the one that is poetic, and recalls to you the furrowed field and the farmer scattering seed, or the one that recalls the lady hog and the future ham. It’s a rotten alphabet! O Carnegie, O prisoner at the bar, reform, reform! There’s never been a noble, upright, right-feeling prophet in this world, from David and Goliath down to Sodom and Gomorrah who wouldn’t censure you for what you’ve done! And yet you have meant well; you have not been purposely criminal, and your Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note is not destitute of virtue and value. It has a certain degree of merit—but I must be just, I must be sternly just, and I say to you this: your Simplified SpellingⒶtextual note is well enough, but like chastity—( artful pause of a moment or two, here, to let the word sink in and give the audience a chance to guess out where the resemblance lies Ⓐtextual note )—itⒶtextual note can be carried too far!”Ⓐtextual note