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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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was Secretary of State. Bob Lovett makes an excellent speech. I have heard Dan Kimball make some of the best, meatiest and most graceful speeches I've ever heard. They're no great emotional appeals, but they are meaty, just right, in good taste and very correct. He could have made one. There were a dozen people in the room who without effort and on the spur of the moment would have made a good speech.

After Mr. Vinson made this speech he started to sit down. Somebody next to him nudged him. “Oh yes,” he said, rising again, “I forgot. I want to propose a toast to the President of the United States,”

All this made me creep, because it was such a beautiful occasion. A few even reasonable good remarks would have so ornamented it. You wouldn't have expected to people at dinners given in their honor many times. If you put your mind on it, you can think of a turn of phrase and recognition of their place in the history of their project and of the relation of all those there to the retiring person that is all right and always makes them like it.

I don't know why it turned our as it did. It wasn't a tense gathering. Everybody was very relaxed. All hatchets





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