{
  "schema": "tga.work.v1",
  "identifier": "dresden:vol-12:robson-and-crane-dinner",
  "slug": "robson-and-crane-dinner",
  "title": "Robson and Crane Dinner",
  "subtitle": "In honor of the actors Stuart Robson and William H. Crane.",
  "excerpt": "After-dinner speech in honor of the comic actors Stuart Robson and William H. Crane.",
  "year": 1889,
  "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/robson-and-crane-dinner/",
  "wordCount": 1138,
  "body": "Robson and Crane Dinner\n\nNew York, November 21, 1887.\n  • The theatre party and supper given by Charles P. Palmer,\n    brother of Courtlandt Palmer, on Monday evening were\n    unusually attractive in many ways. Mr Palmer has recently\n    returned from Europe, and took this opportunity to gather\n    around him his old club associates and friends, and to show\n    his admiration of the acting of Messrs. Robson and Crane.\n    The appearance of Mr. Palmer's fifty guests in the theatre\n    excited much interest in all parts of the house. It is not\n    often that theatre-goers have the opportunity of seeing in a\n    single row, Channcey M. Depew, Gen. William T. Sherman, Gen.\n    Horace Porter and Robert G. Ingersoll, with Leonard Jerome\n    and his brother Lawrence, Murat Halstead and other well-\n    known men in close proximity\n    The supper table at Delmonico's was decorated with a lavish\n    profusion of flowers rarely approached even at that famous\n    restaurant.\n    Mr. Palmer was a charming host, full of humor, jollity and\n    attention to every guest. He opened the speaking with a few\n    apt words. Then Stuart Rodson made some witty remarks, and\n    called upon William H. Crane, whose well-rounded speech was\n    heartily applauded General Sherman, Chauncey M. Depew,\n    General Porter, Lawrence Jerome and Colonel Ingersoll were\n    all in their best moods, and the sallies of wit and the\n    abundance of genuine humor in their informal addresses kept\n    their hearers in almost continuous laughter. Lawrence Jerome\n    was in especially fine form. He sang songs, told stories and\n    said: \"Depew and Ingersoll know so much that intelligence\n    has become a drag in the market, and it's no use to tell you\n    what a good speech I would have made.\" J. Seaver Page made\n    an uncommonly witty and effective speech. Murat Halstead\n    related some reminiscences of his last European tour and of\n    his experiences in London with Lawrence and Leonard Jerome,\n    which were received with shouts of laughter. Altogether the\n    supper was one to be long remembered by all present.—The\n    Tribune, New York, November 23, 1887;\n\nTOAST: COMEDY AND TRAGEDY.\n\nI BELIEVE in the medicine of mirth, and in what I might call the\nlongevity of laughter. Every man who has caused real, true, honest\nmirth, has been a benefactor of the human race. In a world like this,\nwhere there is so much trouble—a world gotten up on such a poor\nplan—where sometimes one is almost inclined to think that the Deity, if\nthere be one, played a practical joke—to find, I say, in such a world,\nsomething that for the moment allows laughter to triumph over sorrow,\nis a great piece of good fortune. I like the stage, not only because\nGeneral Sherman likes it—and I do not think I was ever at the theatre\nin my life but I saw him—I not only like it because General Washington\nliked it, but because the greatest man that ever touched this grain of\nsand and tear we call the world, wrote for the stage, and poured out\na very Mississippi of philosophy and pathos and humor, and everything\ncalculated to raise and ennoble mankind.\n\nI like to see the stage honored, because actors are the ministers, the\napostles, of the greatest man who ever lived, and because they put\nflesh upon and blood and passion within the greatest characters that\nthe greatest man drew. This is the reason I like the stage. It makes us\nhuman. A rascal never gained applause on the stage. A hypocrite never\ncommanded admiration, not even when he was acting a clergyman—except\nfor the naturalness of the acting. No one has ever yet seen any play\nin which, in his heart, he did not applaud honesty, heroism, sincerity,\nfidelity, courage, and self-denial. Never. No man ever heard a great\nplay who did not get up a better, wiser, and more humane man; and no man\never went to the theatre and heard Robson and Crane, who did not go home\nbetter-natured, and treat his family that night a little better than on\na night when he had not heard these actors.\n\nI enjoy the stage; I always did enjoy it. I love the humanity of it. I\nhate solemnity; it is the brother of stupidity—always. You never knew a\nsolemn man who was not stupid, and you never will. There never was a\nman of true genius who had not the simplicity of a child, and over whose\nlips had not rippled the river of laughter—never, and there never will\nbe. I like, I say, the stage for its wit and for its humor. I do not\nlike sarcasm; I do not like mean humor. There is as much difference\nbetween humor and malicious wit as there is between a bee's honey and\na bee's sting, and the reason I like Robson and Crane is that they have\nthe honey without the sting.\n\nAnother thing that makes me glad is, that I live in an age and\ngeneration and day that has sense enough to appreciate the stage; sense\nenough to appreciate music; sense enough to appreciate everything\nthat lightens the burdens of this life. Only a few years ago our dear\nancestors looked upon the theatre as the vestibule of hell; and every\nactor was going \"the primrose way to the everlasting bonfire.\" In those\ngood old days, our fathers, for the sake of relaxation, talked about\ndeath and graves and epitaphs and worms and shrouds and dust and hell.\nIn those days, too, they despised music, cared nothing for art; and\nyet I have lived long enough to hear the world—that is, the civilized\nworld—say that Shakespeare wrote the greatest book that man has ever\nread. I have lived long enough to see men like Beethoven and Wagner put\nside by side with the world's greatest men—great in imagination—and we\nmust remember that imagination makes the great difference between men.\nI have lived long enough to see actors placed with the grandest and\nnoblest, side by side with the greatest benefactors of the human race.\n\nThere is one thing in which I cannot quite agree with what has been\nsaid. I like tragedy, because tragedy is only the other side of the\nshield and I like both sides. I love to spend an evening on the twilight\nboundary line between tears and smiles. There is nothing that pleases me\nbetter than some scene, some act, where the smile catches the tears\nin the eyes; where the eyes are almost surprised by the smile, and the\nsmile touched and softened by the tears. I like that. And the greatest\ncomedians and the greatest tragedians have that power; and, in\nconclusion, let me say, that it gives me more than pleasure to\nacknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe, not only to the stage, but to\nthe actors whose health we drink to-night.\n"
}