Tasks of the Toastmaster

The toastmaster sets the pace of the meeting. He acts in the capacity of a host for it’s up to him to start the ball rolling and to keep the show on the right road. The keynote of his introductions must be levity, whether he introduces one single speaker at a luncheon, or a table load of penguins dressed in black tie and tux for the big banquet.

Banquet Talks

The institution known as the banquet is well described as an affair where a speaker eats a lot of food he doesn’t want, and talks about something he doesn’t understand to lots of people who don’t want to hear him!

A banquet is the answer to every fund-raising need that arises, and they follow a standard pattern: the crowd, the chatter, that mob at the bar, the hunt for a table, a long wait for cold gravy, small talk, big olives and crisp carrots awash in melting ice; hard rolls that crumble on the table cloth and butter as invulnerable as linoleum. Finally the queue for your coat and hat. That banquet is rare where everyone is served at about the same time; where there’s plenty of coffee, a prompt program, and the speaker is not only audible but also knows what he’s talking about.

Ella Jones tells about banquet time in this rhyme:
Now the season has arriven
When the annual feasts are given.
Same old dinners stale and flat,
Same old dabs of this and that,
Same old liquors dulling senses,
Same old stupid audiences,
Same old speeches, same old stories,
Same spread-eagle oratories,
Same old subjects, same toastmasters,
Interspersed with Poetasters,
Same old high-brows, same old jokers,
Same old crowd of mediocres,
Same old languid never-minders,
Same old busy ax-to-grinders,
Same old ennui never ending,
Same old midnight homeward wending.

Banquets become a bore to the lecturer who rides the hard roll circuit, with menus that vary from hawg jowl and corn bread to stewing hen and dumplings interspersed with hash that’s come to a head (commonly called croquettes), spam under glass, and that high hat for hamburger-Salisbury steak.

These entrees always are preceded by burlesque salad (a ripe tomato with a little dressing), and washed down with mouse-colored coffee thin as warm water …. or reheated Java that’s thicker than the plaster on the wall.

Tags: public speaking

Kindly consider linking to this article by just copying and pasting the code below on your website/blog ( press Ctrl+C to copy the entire code). The text link will look on your website like this: Tasks of the Toastmaster

<a href="http://www.public-speaking-art.com/tasks-of-the-toastmaster.html">Tasks of the Toastmaster</a>