And Now Our Honored Guest

The Van Nuys (Calif.) Chamber of Commerce is a happy-peppy type of organization, full of fascinated preoccupation with its own machinery. At its annual dinner last week, the reports of its outgoing and incoming presidents, the installation of officers and introduction of guests took more than three hours.

Then came the climax of the evening--while 300 guests peppily applauded, the principal speaker was introduced. He was none other than crusty, white-haired Dr. Robert A. Millikan, 81, CalTech's famed physicist and Nobel Prizewinner, and therefore sufficiently a man of parts to do what a lot of long-suffering after-dinner speakers only tell their wives they wish they had done. Millikan rose with the air of a man who had been bound to a chair in a locked bank vault and said: "My definition of an educated person is one who can concentrate on one subject for more than two minutes. At this late hour I do not believe this audience would be able to follow the address I was prepared to give." *Then he sat down.

*British Writer Hilaire Belloc, according to unverifiable but attractive sources, once rose before a banquet audience after a long wait and said: "I have been asked to give my address. It is King's Land, Shipley. I should have been there an hour ago, and I am going there immediately. Goodnight."

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