I have much pleasure in informing you that our Mr. Blank, one of our vice-presidents and a well-known resident here, will take the chair at your lecture.
Translated into plain English, this reads:
My poor fellow, I am much grieved to have to inform you that a chairman will be inflicted upon you on the occasion of your lecture before the members of our Society.
In my few years’ lecturing experience, I have come across all sorts and conditions of chairmen, but I can recollect very few that “have helped me.” Now, what is the office, the duty, of a chairman on such occasions? He is supposed to introduce the lecturer to the audience. For this he needs to be able to make a neat speech. He has to tell the audience who the lecturer is, in case they should not know it, which is seldom the case. I was once introduced to an audience who knew me, by a chairman who, I don’t think, had ever heard of me in his life. Before going on the platform he asked me whether I had written anything, next whether I was an Irishman or a Frenchman, etc.
“MARCUS AURELIUS VOS NEFFER IN TE UNIDED SHTAATES!”
Sometimes the chairman is nervous; he hems and haws, cannot find the words he wants, and only succeeds in fidgeting the audience. Sometimes, on the other hand, he is a wit. There is danger again. I was once introduced to a New York audience by General Horace Porter. Those of my readers who know the delightful general and have heard him deliver one of those little gems of speeches in his own inimitable manner, will agree with me that certainly there was danger in that; and they will not be surprised when I tell them that after his delightfully witty and graceful little introduction, I felt as if the best part of the show was over.
Sometimes the chair has to be offered to a magnate of the neighborhood, though he may be noted for his long, prosy orations—which annoy the public; or to a very popular man in the locality who gets all the applause—which annoys the lecturer.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” should be the motto of chairmen, and I sympathize with a friend of mine who says that chairmen, like little boys and girls, should be seen and not heard.