A CAREFULLY PREPARED EXTEMPORE SPEECH.

Patea Mail, 17 July 1882, Page 3

A CAREFULLY PREPARED EXTEMPORE SPEECH.

“ Ladies and Gentleman,” said Cononel Solen, pulling a roll of paper from his jacket) “ This call was entirely unexpected. lam not prepared to speak, and didn’t know five minutes before I was called upon that I was expected to say anything here, so I merely jotted down a few remaks yesterday that I intended to make. You must excuse all blunders, as my speech is entirely impromptu, and the manuscript so poorly written I can hardly read it. Drunkenness is a terrible virtue. I have known men, after a,shore career of dissipation, fill a drunkard’s grave before they were three years old. I have seen rich men pass the wine-cup around their well filled tables, and their poor children crying for a crust of bread. You see men at every corner who have filled drunkard’s graves, you see men reeling about the streets who, if they had died of cholera infantum would have starved the saloon-keeper to death. As Shakespeare says, “Oh that man should put an enemy in ( his mouth to steal away his breath.” My hearers, eelury bus —cplury Ivs —my hearers, the squire has rung in some Greek on me, as I don’t understand Latin 1 am obliged to .quit,”