This is a superb speech by the first and probably best ever humorous keynote speaker. Here Mark Twain brings parenthood to life and brings memories flooding back to every parent (whether they are a humorous business speaker or humorous keynote speaker or not) about the blessing of a new baby who neither made "allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else.  You had to execute his order whether it was possible or not."  As a fearless humorous keynote speaker, Twain poked fun at everyone. Here, he is not afraid to make fun of a man to whom he was a real friend - Ulysses S. Grant. Grant's latter days were riddled with financial difficulties and throat cancer which ultimately took his life. Twain published Grant's memoirs - a superb read - and provided extraordinary generous royalties to his family.

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DELIVERED AT THE BANQUET, IN CHICAGO, GIVEN BY THE ARMY OF THE           TENNESSEE TO THEIR FIRST COMMANDER, GENERAL U. S. GRANT

NOVEMBER, 1879

          The fifteenth regular toast was "The Babies.--As they comfort

          us in our sorrows, let us not forget them in our festivities."

I like that.  We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies.  We have

not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works

down to the babies, we stand on common ground.  It is a shame that for a

thousand years the world's banquets have utterly ignored the baby, as if

he didn't amount to anything.  If you will stop and think a minute--if

you will go back fifty or one hundred years to your early married life

and recontemplate your first baby--you will remember that he amounted to

a good deal, and even something over.  You soldiers all know that when

that little fellow arrived at family headquarters you had to hand in your

resignation.  He took entire command.  You became his lackey, his mere

body-servant, and you had to stand around too.  He was not a commander

who made allowances for time, distance, weather, or anything else.  You

had to execute his order whether it was possible or not.  And there was

only one form of marching in his manual of tactics, and that was the

double-quick.  He treated you with every sort of insolence and

disrespect, and the bravest of you didn't dare to say a word.  You could

face the death-storm at Donelson and Vicksburg, and give back blow for

blow; but when he clawed your whiskers, and pulled your hair, and twisted

your nose, you had to take it.  When the thunders of war were sounding in

your ears you set your faces toward the batteries, and advanced with

steady tread; but when he turned on the terrors of his war whoop you

advanced in the other direction, and mighty glad of the chance, too.

When he called for soothing-syrup, did you venture to throw out any

side-remarks about certain services being unbecoming an officer and a

gentleman?  No.  You got up and got it.  When he ordered his pap bottle

and it was not warm, did you talk back?  Not you.  You went to work and

warmed it.  You even descended so far in your menial office as to take a

suck at that warm, insipid stuff yourself, to see if it was right--three

parts water to one of milk, a touch of sugar to modify the colic, and a

drop of peppermint to kill those immortal hiccoughs.  Continued......

I can taste that stuff yet.  And how many things you learned as you went along!

Sentimental young folks still take stock in that beautiful old saying

that when the baby smiles in his sleep, it is because the angels are

whispering to him.  Very pretty, but too thin--simply wind on the

stomach, my friends.  If the baby proposed to take a walk at his usual

hour, two o'clock in the morning, didn't you rise up promptly and remark,

with a mental addition which would not improve a Sunday-school book much,

that that was the very thing you were about to propose yourself?  Oh!

you were under good discipline, and as you went fluttering up and down

the room in your undress uniform, you not only prattled undignified

baby-talk, but even tuned up your martial voices and tried to sing!

--Rock a-by Baby in the Tree-top, for instance.  What a spectacle for an

Army of the Tennessee!  And what an affliction for the neighbors, too;

for it is not everybody within, a mile around that likes military music

at three in the morning.  And, when you had been keeping this sort of

thing up two or three hours, and your little velvet head intimated that

nothing suited him like exercise and noise, what did you do?  You simply

went on until you dropped in the last ditch.  The idea that a baby

doesn't amount to anything!  Why, one baby is just a house and a front

yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and

your whole Interior Department can attend to.  He is enterprising,

irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities.  Do what you please, you

can't make him stay on the reservation.  Sufficient unto the day is one

baby.  As long as you are in your right mind don't you ever pray for

twins.  Twins amount to a permanent riot.  And there ain't any real

difference between triplets and an insurrection.

Yes, it was high time for a toast-master to recognize the importance of

the babies.  Think what is in store for the present crop!  Fifty years

from now we shall all be dead, I trust, and then this flag, if it still

survive (and let us hope it may), will be floating over a Republic

numbering 200,000,000 souls, according to the settled laws of our

increase.  Our present schooner of State will have grown into a political

leviathan--a Great Eastern.  The cradled babies of to-day will be on

deck.  Let them be well trained, for we are going to leave a big contract

on their hands.  Among the three or four million cradles now rocking in

the land are some which this nation would preserve for ages as sacred

things, if we could know which ones they are.  In one of these cradles

the unconscious Farragut of the future is at this moment teething think

of it! and putting in a world of dead earnest, unarticulated, but

perfectly justifiable profanity over it, too.  In another the future

renowned astronomer is blinking at the shining Milky Way with but a

languid interest poor little chap!--and wondering what has become of that

other one they call the wet-nurse.  In another the future great historian

is lying--and doubtless will continue to lie until his earthly mission is

ended.  In another the future President is busying himself with no

profounder problem of state than what the mischief has become of his hair

so early; and in a mighty array of other cradles there are now some

60,000 future office-seekers, getting ready to furnish him occasion to

grapple with that same old problem a second, time.  And in still one

more cradle, some where under the flag, the future illustrious

commander-in-chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his

approaching grandeurs and responsibilities as to be giving his whole

strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his

big toe into his mouth--an achievement which, meaning no disrespect, the

illustrious guest of this evening turned his entire attention to some

fifty-six years ago; and if the child is but a prophecy of the man,

there are mighty few who will doubt that he succeeded.