As to the kind of audience that I like best to talk to, I would
put at the top of the list an organization of strong, wide-awake,
business men, such, for example, as is found in Boston, New York,
Chicago, and Buffalo. I have found no other audience so quick to see
a point, and so responsive. Within the last few years I have had the
privilege of speaking before most of the leading organizations of this
kind in the large cities of the United States. The best time to get
hold of an organization of business men is after a good dinner,
although I think that one of the worst instruments of torture that was
ever invented is the custom which makes it necessary for a speaker to
sit through a fourteen-course dinner, every minute of the time feeling
sure that his speech is going to prove a dismal failure and
disappointment.
I rarely take part in one of these long dinners that I do not wish
that I could put myself back in the little cabin where I was a slave
boy, and again go through the experience there -- one that I shall
never forget -- of getting molasses to eat once a week from the "big
house." Our usual diet on the plantation was corn bread and pork, but
on Sunday morning my mother was permitted to bring down a little
molasses from the "big house" for her three children, and when it was
received how I did wish that every day was Sunday! I would get my tin
plate and hold it up for the sweet morsel, but I would always shut my
eyes while the molasses was being poured out into the plate, with the
hope that when I opened them I would be surprised to see how much I
had got.
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