AFTER-DINNER SPEECHES

"When the wine is in, the wit is out;"

Only to dolts the adage reaches.

No wise man could for a moment doubt

The value of after-dinner speeches.

_Punch_ can remember the time when Peel,

Whose wisdom still the country teaches,

After steak and port, his nine o'clock meal,

Made the best of after-dinner speeches.

When the Ministers come to the Mansion House,

(The King of London their presence beseeches,)

No guest who has any touch of _nous_

Will be weary of after-dinner speeches.

When the Royal Academy blooms in May,

With its pretty girls and their cheeks like peaches

Who won't, on the opening Saturday,

Listen to after-dinner speeches?

When there's ought that's generous to be done,

A greeting to pay that no soul impeaches,

A dinner's the best thing under the sun,

And its gold coin the after-dinner speeches.

And as to the House, which often suffers

From talk that to dreariest platitude reaches,

It does not often allow its duffers

To make long after-dinner speeches.

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[Illustration: SCENE--CHOP-HOUSE

_Enter Street Boy, and, with suppressed ecstasy._ "Oh, please, there's

your cat and kittens having such a game with the things in the winder!"]

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