What is Your Culture to Me

Excerpt

Twenty-one years ago in this house I heard a voice calling me to ascend the platform, and there to stand and deliver.  The voice was the voice of President North; the language was an excellent imitation of that used by Cicero and Julius Caesar.  I remember the flattering invitation—­it is the classic tag that clings to the graduate long after he has forgotten the gender of the nouns that end in ‘um—­orator proximus’, the grateful voice said, ‘ascendat, videlicet,’ and so forth.  To be proclaimed an orator, and an ascending orator, in such a sonorous tongue, in the face of a world waiting for orators, stirred one’s blood like the herald’s trumpet when the lists are thrown open.  Alas! for most of us, who crowded so eagerly into the arena, it was the last appearance as orators on any stage.