{
  "schema": "tga.work.v1",
  "identifier": "dresden:vol-12:lotos-club-anniversary-dinner",
  "slug": "lotos-club-anniversary-dinner",
  "title": "Lotos Club Dinner — Twentieth Anniversary",
  "subtitle": "New York literary and theatrical club.",
  "excerpt": "After-dinner address at the twentieth-anniversary banquet of the Lotos Club in New York — the literary and theatrical society of Whitelaw Reid, Mark Twain, and their circle.",
  "year": 1890,
  "volume": 12,
  "category": "After-Dinner",
  "author": {
    "name": "Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "wikidata": "Q360326",
    "viaf": "44331023"
  },
  "isPartOf": {
    "title": "The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "edition": "Dresden Edition",
    "publisher": "C. P. Farrell",
    "year": 1900
  },
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/",
  "url": "https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/lotos-club-anniversary-dinner/",
  "wordCount": 590,
  "body": "Lotos Club Dinner, Twentieth Anniversary\n\nNew York, March 22, 1890.\n\nYOU have talked so much of old age and gray hairs and thin locks,\nso much about the past, that I feel sad. Now, I want to destroy the\nimpression that baldness is a sign of age. The very youngest people I\never saw were bald.\n\nSometimes I think, and especially when I am at a meeting where they\nhave what they call reminiscences, that a world with death in it is a\nmistake. What would you think of a man who built a railroad, knowing\nthat every passenger was to be killed—knowing that there was no escape?\nWhat would you think of the cheerfulness of the passengers if every one\nknew that at some station, the name of which had not been called out,\nthere was a hearse waiting for him; backed up there, horses fighting\nflies, driver whistling, waiting for you? Is it not wonderful that the\npassengers on that train really enjoy themselves? Is it not magnificent\nthat every one of them, under perpetual sentence of death, after all,\ncan dimple their cheeks with laughter; that we, every one doomed to\nbecome dust, can yet meet around this table as full of joy as spring is\nfull of life, as full of hope as the heavens are full of stars?\n\nI tell you we have got a good deal of pluck.\n\nAnd yet, after all, what would this world be without death? It may be\nfrom the fact that we are all victims, from the fact that we are all\nbound by common fate; it may be that friendship and love are born of\nthat fact; but Whatever the fact is, I am perfectly satisfied that\nthe highest possible philosophy is to enjoy to-day, not regretting\nyesterday, and not fearing to-morrow. So, let us suck this orange of\nlife dry, so that when death does come, we can politely say to him, \"You\nare welcome to the peelings. What little there was we have enjoyed.\"\n\nBut there is one splendid thing about the play called Life. Suppose that\nwhen you die, that is the end. The last thing that you will know is\nthat you are alive, and the last thing that will happen to you is the\ncurtain, not falling, but the curtain rising on another thought, so\nthat as far as your consciousness is concerned you will and must live\nforever. No man can remember when he commenced, and no man can remember\nwhen he ends. As far as we are concerned we live both eternities,\nthe one past and the one to come, and it is a delight to me to feel\nsatisfied, and to feel in my own heart, that I can never be certain that\nI have seen the faces I love for the last time.\n\nWhen I am at such a gathering as this, I almost wish I had had the\nmaking of the world. What a world I would have made! In that world\nunhappiness would have been the only sin; melancholy the only crime;\njoy the only virtue. And whether there is another world, nobody knows.\nNobody can affirm it; nobody can deny it. Nobody can collect tolls from\nme, claiming that he owns a turnpike, and nobody can certainly say that\nthe crooked path that I follow, beside which many roses are growing,\ndoes not lead to that place. He doesn't know. But if there is such a\nplace, I hope that all good fellows will be welcome.\n"
}