to think they need them. The worst of it is the
less able I am to buy a thing the more I want it and seem to need it.
I'd like to have money enough to make an experiment on myself just to
see if I could ever reach the point, as did the Caliph, where the
only want I'd have would be a want. Possibly, that's what the man
means by complete living. I wonder.

CHAPTER VIII

MY SPEECH

For some time I have had it in mind to make a speech. I don't know
what I would say nor where I could possibly find an audience, but, in
spite of all that, I feel that I'd like to try myself out on a
speech. I can't trace this feeling back to its source. It may have
started when I heard a good speech, somewhere, or, it may have
started when I heard a poor one. I can't recall. When I hear a good
speech I feel that I'd like to do as well; and, when I hear a poor
one, I feel that I'd like to do better. The only thing that is
settled, as yet, about this speech that I want to make is the
subject, and even that is not my own. It is just near enough my own,
however, to obviate the use of quotation-marks. The hardest part of
the task of writing or speaking is to gain credit for what some one
else has said or written, and still be able to omit quotation-marks.
That calls for both mental and ethical dexterity of a high order.

But to the speech. The subject is Dialectic Efficiency--without
quotation-marks, be it noted. The way of it is this: I have been
reading, or, rather, trying to read the masterly book by Doctor
Fletcher Durell, whose title is "Fundamental Sources of Efficiency."
This is one of the most recondite books that has come from the press
in a generation, and it is no reflection upon the book for me to say
that I have been trying to read it. It is so big, so deep, so high,
and so wide that I can only splash around in it a bit. But "the
water's fine." At any rate, I have been dipping into this book quite
a little, and that is how I came upon the caption of my speech. Of
course, I get the word "efficiency" from the title of the book, and,
besides, everybody uses that word nowadays. Then, the author of this
book has a chapter on "Dialectic," and so I combine these two words
and thus get rid of the quotation-marks.

And that certainly is an imposing subject for a speech. If it should
ever be printed on a programme, it would prove awe-inspiring. Next
to making a good speech, I'd like to be skilled in sleight-of-han