Read "Speeches. Literary and Social" by Charles Dickens online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
[At the second annual dinner of the Institution, held at the Freemasons' Tavern, on Saturday, the 20th May, 1865, the following speech was delivered by the chairman, Mr. Charles Dickens, in proposing the toast of the evening: ]
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,-When a young child is produced after dinner to be shown to a circle of admiring relations and friends, it may generally be observed that their conversation-I suppose in an instinctive remembrance of the uncertainty of infant life-takes a retrospective turn. As how much the child has grown since the last dinner; what a remarkably fine child it is, to have been born only two or three years ago, how much stronger it looks now than before it had the measles, and so forth. When a young institution is produced after dinner, there is not the same uncertainty or delicacy as in the case of the child, and it may be confidently predicted of it that if it deserve to live it will surely live, and that if it deserve to die it will surely die.