Mark Twain's Speeches by Mark Twain
page 50 of 326 (15%)
page 50 of 326 (15%)
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glow and burn and flash with all manner of colored fires, which change
and change again with inconceivable rapidity from blue to red, from red to green, and green to gold--the tree becomes a spraying fountain, a very explosion of dazzling jewels; and it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words too strong. THE BABIES THE BABIES DELIVERED AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT, NOVEMBER, 1879 The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies.--As they comfort us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities." I like that. We have not 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. 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 will stop and think a minute--if you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to |
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