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He proceeded to some of the most inane, colloquial and common-place remarks I have heard dropped from any human mouth. If you've read his decisions, you know that he can write a good sentence. He can speak well. But this was full of the most homey and corny references to our admiration for this “great man” who is a “great man and a great President and a great administrator.” There was this constant use of the word “great”, which has some to be a kind of cheap colloquialism in American life. It doesn't mean anything. He even said “my great and good friend”. It was full of cliches. It was as though he couldn't think of anything to say, and all the cliches he'd ever heard at dinners came rumbling back to him. He was a little sentimental at places. He remembered “the great burden that this man undertook when the great President Roosevelt died.” It was that sort of thing. It went on and on. He was responding and thanking the President for having invited us. He was speaking in the name of all the persons who had ever served in his Cabinet. It made you crawl. It made you want to get up there and say it better yourself. I suppose that everybody with the gift of gab in the room wanted to speak instead of him.

There wee plenty of people in the room with the gift of gab—plenty of them. There was not only Stevenson, but Dean Acheson makes a beautiful and graceful speech, and he