The Commemorative Speech
Besides dinners, other gatherings may require commemorative addresses. These speeches are longer, more formal. The success of a debating team, the successful season of an athletic organization, the termination of a civic project, the election of a candidate, the celebration of an historic event, the tribute to a great man, suggest the kinds of occasions in which commemorative addresses should be made.
Chosen with more care than the after-dinner speaker, the person on such an occasion has larger themes with which to deal, a longer time for their development, and an audience more surely attuned to sympathetic reception. He has more time for preparation also. In minor circumstances, such as the first three or four enumerated in the preceding paragraph, the note is usually congratulation for victory.
"These speeches are longer, more formal. "
Except in tone and length these speeches are not very different from after-dinner remarks. But when the occasion is more dignified, the circumstances more significant, addresses take on a different aspect. They become more soberly judicial, more temperately laudatory, more feelingly impressive.
At such times public speaking approaches most closely to the old-fashioned idea of oratory, now so rapidly passing away, in its attempt to impress upon the audience the greatness of the occasion in which it is participating. The laying of a corner-stone, the completion of a monument or building, a national holiday, the birthday of a great man, the date of an epoch-marking event, bring forth eulogistic tributes like Webster's speech at Bunker Hill, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Secretary Lane's Flag Day speech.